Tide of Shadows Ch 23: Ambush

Inquest steel rushed toward her face, but Jos knocked the blade aside with one pistol. Shoving the muzzle of the other down into the gap  between the sailor’s hard-light armor and soft neck flesh, she squeezed the trigger. The Inquest sailor’s eyes went wide.

Jos let the dying asura fall to the ground. “Secure the deck! Stay in teams.”

Without taking a breath, she fired off two more shots, dropping an enemy charging Crewman Nahg from behind. Something moved behind her, and she whipped around, weapons up ready to block. Another sword came down but stopped in the “V” of her criss-crossed guns. She twisted to the side and smashed her forehead into the bridge of the enemy’s nose. Two quick shots and that one wasn’t ever getting up again.

She took a second to survey the battle just as Nexx appeared at her side. A small cut on his left cheek oozed a trickle of blood. Her first mate huffed and scanned the area himself. “Main deck secure. No sign of Dreeax yet.”

Jos checked her weapons and gave him a sharp nod. “I’ll find her. Start sweeping in teams of three, keep half back on the main deck for reserves.”

“Understood. You’re not going alone, are you?” 

“Of course not.” She clapped him on the shoulder. Jos turned her head and bellowed, “Nahg, with me.”

As the pair made their way down the stairwell, Jos kept her pistols ready and Nahg his knives. Two Inquest sailors popped out from around the corner. Nahg pounced on the first, a purple-ish asura with wide, crescent-shaped ears and a sharp arrow of a nose. Jos fired, but her own opponent, a thin, tall-ish asura with bright pink hair, was faster. The female Inquest dodged to the side, letting Jos’s round sink into the wood. In a blink, the asura closed the distance. Jos kept trying to get a shot, but it was all she could do to keep from getting a shortsword to the face.

Using every ounce of her strength, Jos continued to dodge and parry. She realized casting that huge illusion had taken more out of her than she thought. 

The Inquest sailor redoubled her assault with a series of furious blows. Jos blocked them all—barely. But the attack was just a set up. With the last thrust, Jos found both of her arms bound up under her opponent’s armpit. 

The asura grinned as she held her shortsword up, level with Jos’s face. “Time to die.”

Panic flashed through Jos’s mind. Suddenly, she was no longer in a ship about to die at the hands of an Inquest sailor. Instead, she lay on her back, the face of her former comrade looming over her. Cal’s face held that bloodstone-twisted grin and his eyes held the jade fires of raw bloodstone magic. 

“Cal, please!” The voice was her own, a pleading whisper. Tears streamed down her face. 

Calden chuckled, a strange, ethereal echo in his voice. “He hungers.”

Calden’s eyes went wide. Bright red blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. She knew that wasn’t right, and yet…

Then Calden was gone, replaced by the asuran sailor. Her form went limp and she fell to the side, revealing Nahg. In his hands were two bloody blades.

Jos’s heart—pounding in her chest—started to slow to a normal pace. She let out a deep sigh. “Thanks.”

“Captain, can I ask you a question?”

She cleared her throat and straightened her back. “Sure.”

“Who’s Cal?”

The captain scoffed. “Someone I knew in a different life. Now let’s get moving.”

The pair found the officers’ quarters empty. A small table marked the center of the room, surrounded by four bed racks on either side. The room itself showed no signs of life other than the ruffled bed sheets. Jos rose up from her ready-stance and scanned the room one more time. “Where the hell did they go?” 

Nahg’s feet thumped on the deck as he made his way to one of the beds. With the tip of his dagger, he picked up the edge of a blanket. “Maybe they’re hiding?”

Footsteps signalled someone approaching in the passageway. Jos and Nahg whipped around and readied themselves for an attack. Peering down the sights of her main pistol, her finger brushed against the trigger as she waited. She listened as the steps came faster and faster, followed by a yelp and a young asura falling face-first in the doorway. This asura wore simple sailor’s pants and a loose shirt. This sailor was one of her own. 

Jos let out an aggravated sigh. “Crewman Tukk.”

Nahg gave a gurgling growl.

Tukk picked his head up off the deck, his shock of white hair covering his face. With a heavy huff, his hair puffed to the side. “Captain! Uh, Uncle Nexx conveyed that the Inquest vessel has been secured. He queried that I inform you that he and a select group of other crew are awaiting your presence in the ship’s hold.”

Jos blinked and shook her head at the mouthful of words. She lowered her guns and headed for the door. “Tukk?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You’re going to have to work on your brevity.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Fatigue tugged at Jos’s mind, but she shook it off. She had no time to be a layabout now. 

In the hold, they found Nexx and a few others inspecting the crate. As soon as her feet thumped on the first steps, Nexx looked up. “Captain, it’s too quiet. We’ve found eleven crew so far, all killed or subdued. But I swear by the Eternal Alchemy, there was more than that before.”

Jos chewed on her lip. “Yeah. Nahg and I took down two, but something’s wrong. Maybe the other crew were illusions, but that doesn’t account for Dreeax. She must be hiding.”

The ship’s cargo area itself was smaller than Hiraeth’s. Then again, this vessel was not really designed to be a cargo ship. Equally spaced in across the deck were four support beams rising up to the ceiling, each about a dozen feet apart. Smack in the center of the hold was the crate she was looking for, secured to the deck with heavy iron chains. Other than that, the hold was empty.

“That was easy.” She paced around the crate and shook her head. “Too easy. Something’s...off.”

Nahg and Tukk stalked around the perimeter of the space while the other three crew stood near the stairwell. Nexx stood just a few feet away near the crate.

“Aye. It’s make’n my head itch,” the first mate said.

Jos’s own head started to itch. It didn’t make sense. While she doubted that Dreeax was the kind to go down with her ship, Jos didn’t think the High Captain was one to give up quite so easily. And yet, they had control of the ship. “All right. I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get while the getting is good. Nahg and Tukk, get that crate ready for transport.”

The two sailors nodded and set to work. Nexx tilted his head and angled his chin at the captain. “What is it?”

Jos shook her head. “I don’t know.” She looked over the hold one more time, trying to pick out the thing that nagged at the back of her mind. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see it. Still, that unknown thing picked hard at the back of her mind like an Ascalonian Woodpecker in spring. Strolling around the hold, she came to a stop near the forward wall. It was this bulkhead. Something about it was off. 

“Nexx…”

“Yes, Captain?”

“I think…” She stared at the wood grain in the paneling and leaned in close. Then she felt something cold and metallic against her forehead. 

Damn it.

The object pushed against her skin, forcing her to take a step back. Through the wall, the muzzle of a gun appeared, followed by a hand. A leaf-covered hand.

The captain swallowed. “I think I’ve found the problem.”

The wall shimmered and vanished, revealing an arm that stretched back to a rather unhappy looking sylvari. His stony, determined gaze was like a slap to Jos’s face. As if having a gun to her forehead wasn’t bad enough, behind that sylvari was something worse. At least two dozen Inquest, most of whom had guns pointed right at her.

“Primordus’s balls,” Nexx muttered.

The enemy sailors were all clustered into what appeared to be the last third of the cargo hold. A ripple of movement started at the back of the enemy throng and moved forward. As the front sailors shifted apart, the Inquest High Captain stepped forward, a broad grin on her face.

“To be honest, Captain, I was really hoping we’d meet again,” Dreeax said, her face split with a smug grin.

Jos scoffed. “Oh?”

The High Captain glanced up at the ceiling then wiggled her shoulders like she was getting comfy under a thick blanket in the middle of winter. “Oh, yes. Our visit last time was so… , down-to-business. It left little time for us to get to know each other.”

“Yeah, well. You were kind of busy trying to blow us up.”

“Quite true.” Dreeax chuckled, then her smile faded and she became deadly serious. “Now tell your people to stand down.”

“Why would I do that? Even with this little ambush, we have control of your powder magazine. One spark there and it all goes up.”

“Yes, and that would be a shame. I would comment about how that would kill you too, but I expect that’s the point. Anyway, Argyl?”

Jos’s gaze flicked back to the sylvari just as the butt of his pistol smashed into the side of her face. Bright, angry light exploded in her vision and pain shot through her head. The impact dropped her to her knees and her guns slipped from her fingers. Movement rustled behind her and in a flash she saw what was about to happen. Nexx and the others would open fire, but the Inquest had them outnumbered. In a matter of seconds, her people—her friends—would be dead. Without their leaders, the rest of her crew would quickly die or be captured. From there, things would only get worse. 

She reached out with her arm, palm out, and the movement stopped. Above her, the sylvari kept his pistol pointed at her head but watched the High Captain. Jos shifted her other hand and pulled it in close, keeping her moving fingers hidden beneath her own body. A familiar tingle started in the base of her skull as she brought her magical energies to a simmer.

Dreeax scoffed. “Smart decision, even if it makes this a little less fun. Ah well. Tie them up.”

Jos watched as the mass of Inquest sailors surged toward her friends. She glanced at Dreeax, then all around. No one was watching her. She sucked in a breath. What she was about to do might get her killed. No, it very probably would. But she didn’t see any other option. This was the only chance to save her friends and keep the golem out of the Inquest’s hands.

With her eyes closed, Jos finished the spell. The air filled with the tinkling of crystals. 

“No!” Dreeax screamed. 

A gunshot rang out and Jos’s eyes flashed open. She glanced back. The Inquest sailors all stood stone-still as the pink disk shimmered beneath the crate and her friends. Jos’s gaze flicked to Dreeax holding a pistol then back to her friends. Red blossomed in the center of Nexx’s chest. His legs gave way and he dropped to his knees.

She shot him. That krait-loving, goat-faced psycho shot him!

The others started moving, getting ready to attack. Jos saw the looks in their eyes, shock and disbelief. She felt the same, but she couldn’t let any more of them die. 

“Run!” she screamed, then snapped her fingers. Her friends—and the crate—vanished.

Pain exploded in the back of her head and she collapsed to the ground. Fighting through the throbbing in her skull, she forced her eyes open. Above her, the sylvari stared down as he adjusted his grip on the pistol he’d just clubbed her with. High Captain Dreeax moved into view,, her face twisted in rage. 

“It will do you little good, pathetic human. You cannot stop the Inquest.”

Finally, the darkness pressed in and Jos’s eyes closed.