Insistent Assistant 35 (Patreon)

Insistent Assistant

Chapter 35

-VB-

Alan Marris

I looked down at Jack’s Compass.

It was moving.

In the past weeks that we’ve been sailing, it remained steadfast toward the sea stone-lined galleon, but this time, when we were sailing against the wind by zigzagging and tacking maneuvering, the point of the compass quivered. Because of how our sails were designed, we needed to turn the main mast sails as much as we could perpendicular to the wind so that the wind we were sailing against would provide pressure that would push the perpendicular sail and boost us forward.

This was the first time I’ve seen this thing quiver, period.

“I need someone on the crow’s nest to look at bow starboard!” I shouted and half a dozen of my crew quickly scaled the nets to the crow’s nest and the first one to get there pulled out the nest’s telescope and looked. It took her a minute to find our target.

“Ships on the horizon!”

It was time.

“Get ready for battle! Our enemy is right up ahead!”

My words galvanized my crew, and words soon reached my other ship as well as the flag signaller alerted them to imminent combat. I turned back to the crow’s nest and realized that it was Jeanne who’d arrived there first.

“I need numbers, Jeanne! How many masts?!”

“I see at least seve- No, I see at least ten!”

Ten masts?

At worst, that would be three ships with big, chonky guns. At best, that would be six with cannons that wouldn’t hurt us too much. But it was likely that they had fewer ships than more ships with how quickly we caught up to them.

“Can you see their hull?!”

“No, skipper!”

SLAM!

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Azula had slammed the door of my captain’s quarter open. When she walked out, she didn’t have her red and yellow Fire Nation attire but a more sailor-esque outfit with short sleeves, baggier clothes, and a saber hanging from her hip. The attire itself was still red and yellow but she didn’t look out of place now.

“You found them?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Roughly ten nautical miles between us.”

She frowned. “And how much time will you need to catch up to them?” she asked him. “It can’t be more than half a day, right?”

“It shouldn’t,” I replied again. “Both of my ships are what you can call Baroque-class sailing ships. It’s far faster than galleons, though slower than schooners. At our current speed and what I expect their maximum speed is, we should be within cannon shooting range in about an hour.”

“An hour…” she huffed before she turned around and left.

I snorted. She probably got excited and then disappointed that her first fight was so long away (from her perspective), but for the rest of the crew, one hour was just enough time to prepare the cannons, bring out the weapons, and finish the lasts of the patch jobs they could do before the fight begins.

… Well, I might be underestimating them, actually. With how much training they got from Illaoi and how much they have improved under her care, it might not take them more than half an hour because most of the heavy lifting and time spent was readying the guns.

I should help out, too.

“Remember, I don’t want to sink the sea stone-lined galleon!” I shouted for everyone to hear and the flag waver to signal to the other ship. “If there are other ships, then you aim to sink those while designated boarders go and stop the big guns on the galleon!”

My crew brought out gunpowder barrels from their storage rooms, poured the black powder into thin bags, and placed them near the cannons so that they could quickly reload if need be. Other crewmates brought out the cannonballs in all of their varieties. Since we didn’t care to spare the pirates, my gunners preferred to use grapeshots for that maximum human casualty.

“Helms alee in sixty seconds!” I heard the navigator shout, and everyone braced as the ship turned in a tacking maneuver to sail against the wind. Wheeled cannons got tied to the hull frame and everyone made sure nothing would go rolling off, even if the tacking turn wouldn’t be a sharp turn by any means.

“I want those sails turning!” I shouted when I saw how slow the sails were turning due to how few of the crewmates were on sail duty. “We’re going to lose speed if we don’t, and I am not losing that galleon today! We have pirates to kill, lads and lass!”

““Aye, skipper!””

The ship soon righted itself from the turn and we were sailing at full speed again.

-VB-

“Captain, we got ships to our stern!”

The current captain of the ship paused and looked up to the crow’s nest. “Are you sure?” she asked the Millions on the crow’s nest.

“Positive! We’ve got six masts!”

Six masts. It was very likely that there were two ships following them as three masts per ship was the norm.

“Ah? Who the hell is approaching a ship of Baroque Works?” her partner asked as he walked up the stairs to the deck of the castle where she was manning the wheel.

“Some nobody bounty hunter who doesn’t know their place,” she scoffed. “This is the South Blue, though, so we might be surprised.”

“True, true,” the crown-wearing Frontier Officer groaned. “Still, there are too many ingrates and bastards on the open seas who don’t know how to appear before a royalty. You think these rabble will be the same, Miss Monday?”

“We’ll have to see, Mr. 9,” she replied. “Where is Miss Wednesday?”

“In her room with her duck. Want me to get her?”

“You should. We will be to plan on how we will take out our pursuers.”

-VB-

A/N: am I bringing in too many canon characters?