"I thought we wanted to capture the ships intact," Roger said almost mildly.
"What would you have done, Your Highness?" Pahner asked. "Yeah, we want to capture the ships, and recapture the convoy, if we can. But Prince John, obviously, would prefer to avoid being boarded herself."
"And apparently the Lemmar agree with that preference," D'Nal Cord observed. "Look at that."
He raised an upper arm and pointed. One of the six raider vessels drifted helplessly, completely dismasted while the blood oozing down her side dyed the water around her. Her deck was piled and heaped with the bodies of her crew, and it was obvious that no more than a handful of them could still be alive. Three more raiders each had one of the flotilla's other schooners alongside, and now that Hooker's carronades were no longer bellowing, Roger could hear the crackle of small arms fire as the K'Vaernian boarders stormed up and over them. Prince John's plasma cannon had accounted for a fifth raider, but the sixth and final pirate vessel had somehow managed to come through the brutal melee with its rigging more or less intact, and it was making off downwind just as fast as its shredded canvas would allow.
"Do we let them go, or close with them?" the prince asked.
"Close," Pahner said. "We want to capture the ships, and I'm not a great believer in giving a fleeing enemy an even break. They either surrender, or they die."
"They're not letting us go," Vunet said.
"Would you?" Cies shot back with a grunt of bitter laughter as he looked around the deck.
The crew was hastily trying to repair some of the damage, but it was a futile task. There was just too much of it. Those damned bombards of theirs were hellishly accurate. Unbelievably accurate. They'd smashed Rage of Lemmar from stem to stern and cut away over half her running rigging, in the process. Coupled with the way they'd shredded the sails themselves, the damage to the ship's lines—and line-handlers—had slowed their escape to a crawl.
The bombards had done nearly as much damage to the crew, as well. The quarterdeck was awash in blood and bodies, and the crew had put a gang of slaves to work pitching the offal over the side. The enemy's round shot had been bad enough, but the splinters it had ripped from the hull had been even worse. Some of them had been almost two-thirds as long as Cies himself, and one of them had gutted his original helmsman like a filleted fish. Nor was that the only crewman who'd been shredded by bits and pieces of his own ship. Some of that always happened when the bombards got a clear shot, but Cies had never imagined anything like this. Normal bombard balls were much slower than the Hell-forged missiles that had savaged his vessel. Worse, he'd never seen any ship that could pour out fire like water from a pump, and the combination of high-velocity shot and its sheer volume had been devastating beyond his worst nightmares of carnage.
Now the Rage was trying to limp to the south and away from the vengeful demons behind her. He'd hoped that with one of their own crippled (by what, for all intents and purposes, had been a single lucky shot) the other four might have let his own ship go. But it appeared they had other plans.
"We could..." Vunet said, then paused.
"You were about to suggest that we surrender," Cies said harshly. "Never! No Lemmar ship has ever surrendered to anyone other than Lemmar. Ever. They may take our ship, but not one crewman, not one slave, will be theirs."
"They're not heaving to," Roger said with a grunt. "Captain Pahner?"
"Yes, Your Highness?" the Marine replied formally.
"If we really want that ship intact, this is about to become a boarding action. I think it's about time to let the ground commander take over."
"You intend to take them on one-on-one?"
"I think we have to, if we don't want them to get away," Roger replied. Pahner gazed at him, and the prince shrugged. "Pentzikis, Tor Coll, and Sea Foam already have their hands full. Prince John can probably take the fourth pirate—I doubt there's more than a couple dozen of these Lemmar still alive aboard her, and she sure as hell can't get away with no masts at all. But this guy in front of us isn't just lucky. He's smart... and good. If he weren't, he'd be drifting around back there with his buddies. So if you want him caught, we're the only one with a real shot at him."
"I see. And when we catch up with him, you'll be where, precisely, Your Highness?" Pahner asked politely.
"Like I say, Sir," Roger said, "it's time to let the ground commander take over."
"I see." Pahner gazed at him speculatively for several moments, considering what the prince hadn't said, then nodded with an unseen smile.
"Very well, Your Highness. Since boarding actions are my job, I'll just go and get the parties for this one assembled."
CHAPTER TEN
"Come off the guns and rig the mortars!" Despreaux ordered, pulling gunners off the carronades as she trotted down the line of the starboard battery. "We're going to be boarding from port!"
The Ima Hooker was slicing through the water once more, rapidly overhauling the fleeing pirate vessel. It would have been difficult to guess, looking at the sergeant's expression, just how unhappy about that she was. Not that she was any more eager than Captain Pahner to see the raiders escape, if not for exactly the same reasons. Nimashet Despreaux had a serious attitude problem where pirates—any pirates—were concerned, but she would have been much happier if at least one of the other schooners had been in position to support Hooker. There were still an awful lot of scummies aboard that ship, however badly shaken they must be from the effects of the carronades. And as good as the K'Vaernians and their Diaspran veterans were, hand-to-hand combat on a heaving deck was what the Lemmar did for a living. There were going to be casualties—probably quite a lot of them—if the raiders ever got within arms' reach, and a Mardukan's arms were very, very long.
And Despreaux was particularly concerned about one possible casualty which wouldn't have been a problem if any of the other schooners had been in Hooker's place.
But at least if they had to do it, it looked as if Roger intended to do it as smartly as possible. He was steering almost directly along the Lemmaran ship's wake, safely outside the threat zone of any weapon the raider mounted. Given Hooker's superior speed and maneuverability, Despreaux never doubted that Roger would succeed in laying her right across the other ship's stern. Nor did she doubt that he would succeed in raking the pirate's deck from end to end with grapeshot with relative impunity as he closed. After which, Hooker's crew and Krindi Fain's Diasprans would swarm up and over the shattered stern and swiftly subdue whatever survived from the Lemmaran crew.