//------------------------------// // 22 The Scourge of the Pirates // Story: The Twilight Enigma // by iisaw //------------------------------// Chapter Twenty Two The Scourge of the Pirates Which contains various and sundry lessons of greater and lesser importance, prefaced by a touch of philosophy. Spring to Fall, 1013 In various and sundry lands. The best kind of knowledge is the sort that makes you look at ordinary situations in a completely new way. After going through Celestia's annotated copy of The Princess a dozen times, I was thinking about how other ponies looked at ordinary situations, and that occasionally made me a little distracted. "Twilight, d'you mind me askin' why you been staring at that head o' broccoli for the last ten minutes?" "Hmn?" I snapped out of my reverie. "Oh, hi, Applejack. How long have you been there?" "'Bout ten minutes. I came to get the veggies for supper an' found you standin' there. I could see you were thinkin' and I didn't want to disturb you, but I need to get the carrots an' such[1] to the galley so's the cook can get supper goin'." ---------- [1] Nebula was the most unusual pirate vessel aloft for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that Applejack had lined the rail of the stern gallery with big window boxes and had planted all sorts of vegetables to provide the crew with fresh food when we were far from home. The ship somewhat resembled a market garden from astern. I drew the line at corn, however. ---------- I moved aside so Applejack could load up her basket. "What were you thinkin', if'n you don't mind me askin'?" "Oh… just how experience is a terrible way to learn things," I said, my mind still half elsewhere. "Really?" AJ went on pulling carrots, but like most earth ponies, she could articulate perfectly well with her mouth full. "I don't know 'bout that, Twi. Books are fine an' dandy, but just about everythin' I've learned comes from experience, and I don't do too bad." "I didn't mean it that way," I said, turning to her and giving her my full attention. "Experience is great for repetitive tasks and dependable environments, and also for refining knowledge, but there are times when it's not only not good, but actually misleading and potentially disastrous." Applejack frowned and cocked her head at me. "Is this one o' those filly-sophical sorta things? I don't put much store in that sort o' foolishness." "No," I said, a bit miffed. "This is something practical. I knew you'd be coming for the vegetables, so I was thinking about what the broccoli would think." Applejack raised an eyebrow slightly. "Don't look at me like that! I'll explain." Applejack sighed and leaned against the bulkhead. "Go ahead, sugarcube. I'm sure this'll be fascinatin'." I cleared my throat. "Look at it from the point of view of that head of broccoli. If it had a brain, what would it think about the world? It grew up in nice, nourishing soil, and every day you came and watered it. Its experience is that every day it gets bigger and healthier, thanks to a kind pony who cares for it. If it had to predict what was going to happen to it for the foreseeable future, it would say that it would get watered and grow bigger every day." "'Cept, I'm fixin' to cut its head off an' put it in this here basket," Applejack said. "Exactly!" I agreed. "But the broccoli's prediction was completely reasonable, given all of its experience. It could have drawn a precise graph of its predicted growth based on data gathered over its entire life and been completely wrong, because it lacked specific knowledge of typical gardening procedures!" Applejack's expression had turned to worry and her ears drooped a bit. "Twilight, should I go get the rest of the gals?" I sighed. "No, I'm fine. I just... " "We're not far from tryin' out our big plan to clear out the pirates, an' you're gettin' nervous about it 'cause there's nothin' else you can do. That it?" I gave her a sheepish grin. "I suppose so." She smiled back. "Well, me an' Pinkie will whup up a big ol' cinnamon apple pie for dessert! That'll help take your mind off things for a spell!" It was a great pie, but I still couldn't help worrying that there was a metaphorical pony with garden shears lurking somewhere in my future. = = = Up until that point, we'd had an easy time picking off pirate ships one by one. We'd load up a nice valuable cargo and have our crew do some bragging about how much money they were going to make in local watering holes, and the pirates would come to us. Sometimes we got hit before we were even out of sight of land. Sometimes we'd play the pirate and capture the ships that came to join up with the notorious Captain Blackmane. The encounters varied, but usually, I would freeze the pirate crew with my magic and we would chain them up, transfer their cargo, if any, and sink their ship. Sometimes they had magical protection, and that's when Rainbow Dash's speed, or Rarity's facility with her blades would come in handy. Without their vessels, the pirates were harmless. We usually dropped them off at whatever ports we visited next, with a little advice on the viability of alternative career paths. This might seem like foolishness, but it was actually part of a bigger plan. In the third chapter of The Princess, Marechiavelli wrote, "Ponies must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a pony must be such that we need not fear her vengeance."[2] ---------- [2] In the margin, Celestia had written, "Annihilation is easier to recommend than to achieve, but it is very convenient to have one's enemies believe one subscribes to this policy." ---------- For nearly five months I had been "injuring" the pirates of the West. Marechiavelli didn't write "might revenge," she wrote, "will revenge" (emphasis mine), and I was counting on it. = = = Rawboned Mari and her fleet ambushed us as we were navigating through a tricky pass in the Chimera Massif, headed for the lowlands of the Mareghreb. It was a vicious attack, and from the beginning it was clear she didn't intend to take any prisoners. The unicorns Mari had stationed in the rocky spires above the pass opened up on us with everything they had. Without the protective web woven into her envelope, Nebula would have dropped like a stone within seconds. Our attackers knew we had a seriously powerful spellcaster aboard but hadn't expected military-grade armor. That didn't stop them from continuing their attack. The next targets they chose were the tallest of the rock spires on either side of us. Their magic blasts might not be able to burn through our envelope, but several dozen tons of rock landing on top of us would down us just as surely. Nebula's crew went to work without hesitation or orders from me. A season of fighting off smaller ambushes had made it almost routine for them. I cast a conical shield over Nebula, shedding the falling boulders to either side, as Fluttershy dropped ballast to get us above our attackers. There were several loud cracks and the unicorns to starboard began firing wildly into the air. Rainbow Dash's multi-colored trail was visible looping and twisting through the spires, but she herself was traveling far too fast to be seen. Every second that passed, there were fewer bolts of magic being cast. We rose above the jagged edge of the canyon into the turbulent upper air, and that's when the whole fleet hit us. The reason that airships use the passes through the massif is that the hot air rising from the desert below creates a violent turbulence along the edge that is difficult to fly through at the best of times. Usually, the winds will cause severe damage to a ship even if they don't wreck it, so everypony uses a couple of long sloping canyons that descend to the Mareghreb. Everypony but a revenge-crazed madmare, that is. Two big rebuilt merchant ships stood back from the edge of the massif, yawing and pitching in the wild air currents, while a dozen fast-attack craft darted in on us. "Those are Zarabian military!" Rarity exclaimed. "The khan isn't even trying to hide his support of those rogues!" "I don't think the khan is expecting any surviving witnesses," I grumbled, while modifying my shield to completely enclose Nebula. The Zarabian ships charged in, probably hoping to overwhelm our shield with sheer force. They were lighter than the pirates' faux merchant ships and so flew erratic and barely in control courses toward us. Even so, almost all of them hit us on their first pass, slamming their bladed prows into the shield with enough force that it shook me. Their mistake was that they came all at once. Against a unicorn of high magical ability, it was the right choice: Use overwhelming force to crack the shield, then dart in for hoof-to-hoof before she could recover. But I was stronger than they planned for. When they all rebounded from my shield at once (or completely missed as was the case with two of the craft), that gave me time to drop the shield and go on the offensive. The craft were well armored with both conventional and thaumophobic systems, and it took me a half dozen attempts to find a spell that was effective against them. But when I did, I had the key to disabling all of them. Uniformity has its downsides. Ferrous metals are naturally magic-resistant to a high degree and the zebras hadn't thought to coat their propeller shafts where they emerged from the engine housings. Carefully teleported sand from our dry ballast compressed around the drive shafts with a high-pressure compounded shield spell heated the shafts quickly enough that they failed within seconds. They either jammed or shed their propellers, and that put the targeted ship out of the fight. Pinkie Pie kept an ear to the speaking tube from the dorsal cupola, where Applejack was spotting for us. She didn't say anything, just pointed in the direction of the ships hidden from my view by Nebula's envelope. There were a couple of moments when I could have sworn she was using all four hooves… possibly more. Regardless, the information enabled me to accurately teleport to where I could get a clear shot and then pop back to the quarterdeck. Working together, we crippled all of the fast-attack ships within minutes, long before any of them could maneuver around for a second pass. We took a few arrow strikes, but the turbulent air made archery ineffective. The disabled ships whirled away on the winds. I appeared back on the quarterdeck after finishing the last Zarabian ship just in time to hear Pinkie say, "That mare is completely insane… and I can respect that." I turned to look over the stern rail and saw Mari's ships bearing down on us at full speed. I'll say this for her, she was certainly no quitter. I aimed a heavy blast below the prow of the lead ship and wasn't really surprised to see it spatter and dissipate off their own anti-magic mesh. "Hey!" Pinkie Pie cried out. "She's got that stuff, too! Can she do that?" Evidently, she could. She could also plaster her hull and envelope in the Zebra thaumophobic coating and employ some very powerful spell-casters, as it turned out. My trick with the Zarabian ships didn't work on hers, because her power linkages were all coated bronze, and her unicorns gave me no time to experiment further. I popped up a shield as the first bolts of magic sizzled in and got a good idea of how strong her unicorns were. Fairly impressive, but nothing I couldn't cope with, as long as I didn't have several other things to cope with at the same time. Which I did. It turned out that Rawboned Mari was even crazier than any of us expected. The burning green goo that was a common, if horrible, component of aerial warfare in Zebrica was very tricky to use, even in calm conditions. To try to catapult a mass of that flaming sticky stuff in moderately rough conditions was incredibly risky. To attempt to use it in what might as well have been a storm was complete insanity. Rawboned Mari was completely insane. The second ship went for altitude while I was busy keeping the lead ship's unicorns from burning holes in us. I was using a partial shield to conserve energy while trying to figure out a way to get us some breathing space for an attack of our own, when Pinkie Pie suddenly shouted, "Twitchy-tail, twitchy-tail!" I snapped my shield into a complete sphere around us, just in time to prevent the flaming green goo from coating the top of our envelope. I still don't know how they had managed to loft that stuff high enough and accurately enough to get it on target. "Ooooh…" Pinkie said, wide-eyed, her ear still pressed to the speaking tube. "Applejack has a potty-mouth!" Considering that AJ was in the cupola less than a pony-length below where the alchemical fire roared away, I think a little cussing was forgivable. Stuck to a surface, even a magical force field, the green goo could burn for hours. I couldn't let the shield collapse without endangering us. But as long as the fire was outside… "Fluttershy, bring us about!" I snapped. "We're going to ram her!" I expected some surprise or reluctance, but Fluttershy spun the wheel without hesitation, a glint of anger in her eyes. "I'll aim our prow to hit just above their main deck. Even if the collision doesn't cripple them, that'll wipe off most of the fire onto the underside of their envelope." "Uhmn… yeah," I answered her, a little taken aback at the cold anger in her voice. "Good plan." I altered the shield to a spindle shape, giving it a sharp point fore and aft, while listening to Fluttershy muttering under her breath. "Try to hurt my baby, will you? I'll show you!" Sun and Moon, I never want that mare mad at me! The ship that had catapulted the green goo onto us tried everything they could to evade our charge, but their pilot was nowhere near as good as Fluttershy. The unicorns from the other ship tried blinding us by concentrating their fire forward, but the spindle shape of the shield kept the upper half of the sky clear for us. "BRACE FOR IMPACT!" I called out in the Royal Voice. Nebula hit right where Fluttershy said she would. Even with an alicorn-powered shield in place, the momentum transfer was brutal. Anything aboard that wasn't tied down went flying, a few lines of standing rigging parted, and the hull groaned in protest as the stern pitched upwards and the whole ship violently swung, rolling onto her larboard beam as she rebounded from the collision. I winced as a stabbing pain shot through my horn. Keeping the shield intact under the impact of several tons of airship had taxed me to my limits, and the unicorns aboard the lead vessel never let up with their barrage. I spared a glance for our target. Her bow was smashed and the forward third of her envelope was ablaze, sending green flames and thick, oily smoke swirling into the sky. Her crew were abandoning ship. "Do it again, do it again!" Pinkie Pie stomped the deck in glee. "Sorry, Pinkie," I said. "I couldn't take another hit like that." In fact, I was having difficulty maintaining the complete shield. "I'm going to have to shrink the shield! Stand by to repel boarders!" The crew scrambled for their weapons. There was no time to rig the anti-boarding netting. I rotated the shield until the part that still had some flaming goo attached was under our keel and then shrunk it to a shallow cone that only covered line-of-sight to the remaining pirate ship. Pegasi from the burning ship swooped down, strafing our decks with arrows. They had to get close to have any chance of hitting a target in the rough air, and that put them in range of our bows and unicorn telekinesis. The archery was next to useless. One of the pirates took an arrow through the flesh of his foreleg, but that was by pure chance. The two things that did have an effect were Pinkie's launcher and Rarity's blades. The net catapult that Pinkie had cobbled together as a weapon of mercy fired a weighted net with a small parachute attached. In theory, it would tangle up attacking pegasi or griffons and then safely lower them to the ground. In practice, at least in that particular situation, the net worked perfectly, but the parachute danced all over the sky, caught in the vicious turbulence and updrafts. It was nauseating to watch, let alone experience. I had much more sympathy for the poor ponies caught up in Pinkie's device than the others who floundered earthward with their flight feathers sliced in half. The remaining pegasi withdrew, meeting up beyond archery range with a dozen more that had launched themselves from the last ship. They wouldn't risk strafing again, and sure enough, Pinkie relayed Applejack's sharp-eyed report that the new pegasi carried small shields. They'd use them to cover a rush and go hoof-to-hoof. "If we sit out here, we're going to get worn down," I said, half to myself. "We've got to take the fight to them." "That's the spirit, Twilight!" Rainbow Dash's cheery voice came from behind me just before her hooves hit the deck. Her feathers were in disarray, and she had a magic burn across one shoulder and a shallow cut on her right cheek that was bleeding like crazy. She was grinning her head off. "What's the plan?" "We go in full speed. Make them think we're going to ram them and then slew around to put our rails together when they try to evade." I turned to Fluttershy. "Can you manage that in these winds?" She rolled her eyes at me. "Right," I said. "So we grapple and board before they know what's going on. We'll have to soak up the magic blasts until I can grab the unicorns. They'll be sure to have some sort of protection, so it'll take a minute. Then I can let loose with whatever I have left." "I'll roll Nebula, so her rail is higher than theirs when we come alongside," Fluttershy said. "Her deck will provide cover for our archers. But the crew will have to fix the grapples quickly so we don't swing away." "Good idea!" I told her. "Dash, relay that to the crew, then grab our pegasi and get back in the air. You and they will have to threaten the pirate fliers to keep them off until we hit. But threaten only, understand? They outnumber us, so fighting them is going to get somepony killed." "Oh, Twilight," Dash said, smirking at me. "Such big strong wings, and you still think with your hooves in the dirt!" Before I could ask her what she meant, she took off for the main deck. I could only hope she wouldn't try something suicidal. Fluttershy made a complex maneuver that had us slewing all over the sky but ended with us suddenly closer and on an intercept course with the pirate ship. In the waist, Nebula's crew were preparing the grappling hooks, lines, and poles. "AJ says the pegasi are coming!" Pinkie Pie said. "They're going to hit us topside." I bit back a curse, wondering what had happened to Rainbow Dash. "Rarity! Take two ponies and get up to the cupola! You'll have to hold them—" And that's when the tornado hit. As bad as it was for us, it was devastating for the pirate pegasi. It only lasted for a minute or so, but it felt much longer. Fluttershy clung to the wheel and rode it out, bringing us back on a collision course with the pirate ship only seconds after the funnel cloud dissipated. Rainbow Dash thumped down on the deck next to me shortly afterward, still laughing. "Wow, Twilight! You should have seen those dumb pigeons! None of them knew a thing about weather work, and they only made it worse on themselves!" "Your tornado took them all out?" "Yup! Those dummies paid the gravity bill, big time! They'll be spitting out sand for weeks!" "Nice going, Dash!" I gave her a friendly swat on her uninjured shoulder with a wingtip. "Grab a cutlass and give us cover when we board. They'll have kept a couple of their pegasi in reserve." "Only a couple?" She sneered. "Hey," I said, touching her again with my wing, gently. "Do not take any stupid risks, okay?" She outright laughed at that. "Why should you have all the fun?" Then she jumped over the rail to the main deck and joined the boarding party. "What the hay did she mean by that?" I muttered. Pinkie Pie leaned over and looked me in the face, then shook her head and sadly said, "Oh, Twilight…" Then things got busy. The boarding maneuver went exactly as Fluttershy said it would. Nebula's crew fought valiantly, with skill and well-practiced coordination. My plan worked nearly perfectly. It was horrible. Rawboned Mari was a unicorn worthy of her name and murderous reputation. I took out all the other magic users quickly and efficiently, but she almost killed me. She was tall and not just lean but practically emaciated. Gray coat, violet mane and tail worn long and ragged. Her cutie mark was a red dagger with a wisp of black smoke rising from the blade. Even though magic was her primary weapon, she carried a long narrow scimitar in one hoof. I leaped onto her quarterdeck after neutralizing the unicorns and gave her a chance to surrender. That's what good guys do, right? "You'll be treated fairly, Captain," I said. "I promise," "I'm going to enjoy gutting you, Blackmane," she replied, raising her sword to point at my eyes. Despite the stories of her exploits, I didn't expect her to use dark magic. The sword was a distraction. As I lifted my cutlass into a guard position, black energy bubbled out of Mari's horn, crackling with green discharges, and lanced straight into my chest. Failsafe. I'd practiced the spell until it was a reflexive fall-back, and with the last bit of my consciousness, I triggered it. My world narrowed down to the matrix of the spell, feeding the last of my strength into it to keep Mari's dark spell from tuning my heart into a rotting mass of black ruin. I pushed it back. I won, inch by inch. But while I lay on the deck, insensible to anything but the magical struggle for my life, Mari stood over me with her scimitar. It's nice to have friends. I regained consciousness with a water bottle pressed between my lips. I took a drink before opening my eyes to find my head cradled in the crook of Fluttershy's thigh. "You'll be okay, Twilight," she said softly. "The wound isn't deep." Wound? I became aware of a dull ache[3] and a sticky feeling in my barrel just behind my left foreleg. ---------- [3] Contrary to popular usage, a "stabbing" pain is nothing at all like the pain one experiences when stabbed. I am more than a little regretful that I know this to be true from personal experience. --------- "Where's…" But a slight turn of my head gave me the answer. Rawboned Mari's body lay next to me on the quarterdeck, cut to ribbons, five slender blades standing up from her corpse like needles in a pin cushion. "Oh." "Yes," Fluttershy said, almost too quietly to be heard. "Is Rarity okay?" Fluttershy lowered her head, her mane falling across her face. "Applejack is with her," was all she said. I got up, despite her protests, and assessed the aftermath. Two of our ponies were so badly wounded that the doctor had used the cockatrice box on them, and there were a myriad of cuts, burns, and bruises, but none of the Nebulas had been killed outright. Mari's ship was named Viper, which meant that her crew were referred to as Vipers. Unlike the natural animal, the Vipers had no sense of self-preservation, and unlike the Nebulas, they had fought until unconsciousness or death. I had never encountered such fanaticism before, and it sickened me. "When I decided our trip would be too dangerous for Spike to come along, I meant physically dangerous," I said to Pinkie Pie as she helped distract me while the doctor cleaned and stitched up my wound. All the painkillers had been distributed to more deserving ponies. Pinkie nodded. "Hurts need time to heal, Twilight. We should go home." So we did. = = = Luna was furious with me. "Thou hadst no right to risk thyself in such an addlepated manner!" she shouted as she stomped back and forth across the floor of her bedchamber. "Thy quest was noble, but thou art a fool for behaving as some pewling heroine in a saga! Thinkst thou that it is a game to play at like foals at clippy-clop? Hast thou learned nothing of the way of the world beyond our safe and coddled borders?" "Uhmn… sorry?" "Nay! Speak not to me of regrets, Twilight! Swear, rather, that thou wilt never again give a mote of advantage to those who oppose thee! When confronting a foe, every heartbeat the fight continues gives another chance to lose the advantage, or for ill fortune to strike. Thou must needs be swift, terrible, and remorseless in combat!" I managed to choke out a half-whispered, "Okay." "Ahhh… by the black pits of Tartarus, I despair of thee!" She collapsed to the floor and buried her head between her forelegs. It took me a moment to find my voice again. "Luna…" I took a tentative step forward. "We did a lot of good. The pirate fleets are broken. There are some lone ships left, but merchants and traders can mostly move in safety. People in the cities are better off because goods are cheaper now, and insurance rates have… hey… Luna?" I bent down and nuzzled her head. "Are you crying?" She lifted her head, and I flinched back from her. She was crying, but the expression on her face was frightening. "To the pits with merchants and tradesponies! Let all the lands be o'errun by villains and predators! Let the world be ruled by dark and terrible gods… if only those gods be we two!" Her eyes glowed, and her pupils narrowed into slits. "Luna, stop it! You don't mean that!" "With all my heart, I do," she hissed. The light in the chamber seemed to bleed away, and Luna stood and towered over me, her coat darkening. "An' the world be filled with joyous, laughing folk, all at peace and burdened only by prosperity, still 'twould be my unutterable torment if it lacked you." Okay, I know that I am a strident proponent of logic, skepticism, and rational thinking, but there are some times when they aren't applicable to a situation. I grabbed Luna in my magic and threw her to the floor, rolling her over onto her back. Her eyes blazed in reflexive anger, but I slapped her horn as I threw myself onto her to disrupt whatever spell she had been raising. Then I used all of my strength to pin her to the floor and violently kissed her until she calmed down. Then, I kept kissing her for quite a while after that. In the morning, I swore to her that I would never again hesitate before a deadly enemy, and that I would be ruthless in the preservation of my own life. = = = =