Old Mars

Jason scowled. “If we return to Freehaven without a hold full of plunder, we’ll catch hell from Rac and the other captains. We’ve been sailing light for a little too long, I think.” He looked from the naval vessel to the galleon and back again. “And that galleon must be hauling something of value if the Praxians want her so badly.”

“So the Hegemony turns to piracy, then?” Tyr mused.

“Or the crew of this corvette has, maybe.” Jason rubbed his lower lip. The naval vessel had launched grappling hooks over the deck of the galleon, and was pulling the two ships closer together, preparing to board. “They don’t appear to have noticed us.”

“With the wind at our backs,” Tyr answered, “we have the sandstorm blowing before us. And their attention is on their present prey, in any event.”

A slow smile tugged the corners of Jason’s mouth. “Once the Praxians board the galleon, their corvette won’t have much more than a skeleton crew left on board.”

“And if we hang back and let the sandstorm shield us from their notice …” Tyr clacked his mandibles together softly, chuckling.

Jason turned to the rest of the crew who were gathered on the deck of the Argo, awaiting orders. They huddled against the drying sands that buffeted them in the high winds, little puffs of steam erupting here and there from the breathers that kept their gills wet and supplied with oxygenated water.

“To your stations!” Jason drew the curved sword that hung at his waist, raising it high overhead. “Run out the catapults! Prepare to engage!”

The first inkling that the sailors aboard the Praxian corvette had of the approaching Argo was the fusillade of rocks and debris that pelted down upon them, fired from the pirates’ catapults. So intent had the Praxian sailors been on taking the galleon, though, that their first instinct was that the mercantile vessel had somehow managed to return fire. It was only when Jason Carmody and the other pirates of the Argo swung onto the corvette’s deck, the captain shouting a war cry and the others hissing menacingly through their mandibles, that the sailors realized that they were under attack by a third party.

“Pirates!” one of the sailors shouted, fumbling for the long knife sheathed at his waist. “Warn the—”

Jason silenced the rest of the sailor’s call for alarm, driving the point of his sword through the breather around the sailor’s neck and into the fleshy throat beneath. There had been a time when Jason had balked at the use of lethal force, back when he and Tyr had first been taken on board by a pirate ship and invited to join the crew. Jason had tried to carry out his duties with a minimal use of force, incapacitating if possible, killing and maiming only if absolutely necessary. But that had been half a lifetime ago, and in the years since, he had seen firsthand what the Praxian Hegemony and its faithful servants did to any who defied their laws. Jason had seen too many broken and mutilated victims of Praxian “justice” to spare any mercy now for those Praxians who meted it out.

Jason yanked his sword free of the sailor’s neck, and before the body had hit the deck, Tyr was at his side, an electrified whip coiled in one hand.

“The Suffocated God guide your passage,” the first officer muttered over the fallen sailor. Though technically he hadn’t been a priest since before Jason knew him, and there was little chance that the sailor had shared his faith, old habits died hard.

“On your right!” Jason barked, stepping alongside Tyr. A trio of sailors charged toward them, clubs and knives in hand.

Jason skewered through the belly the first sailor to reach him, halting his advance, and lashed out with a high kick that knocked loose a second sailor’s breather. As the first dropped to his knees, trying unsuccessfully to keep his black innards from spooling out through the wound, the second gasped in the dry, dusty air for breath, his eyes wide with panic.

Tyr lashed out with his whip, catching the third sailor around the neck. As the sailor grabbed hold of the whip and yanked back, clearly hoping to pull Tyr off his balance, Tyr simply thumbed a stud on the whip’s handle, and sent a bristling charge of electricity coursing down the length of the whip. The sailor jerked and thrashed, eyes rolling back in his head, and Jason caught a scent that reminded him of seafood grilling over an open flame back home.

As Tyr shook his whip loose from the sailor’s neck, Jason took stock of the situation. A half dozen of his crewmen had boarded the corvette along with him and the first officer, and a quick accounting showed that all of them were still standing, having at worst suffered only minor wounds. All of the Praxian sailors in evidence were fallen at their feet.

“It would seem that the ship is ours,” Tyr said, coiling his whip.