They led Mercer out of the hold, followed by his three surviving henchmen, where they were locked up in an unoccupied room near their home base, where Shades and Maximilian stood guard.
Max and Justin then helped Roxy round up the two surviving Cyexians. The one Max stunned and tied up earlier caught cutting halfway through her ropes with a knife behind her back before she dropped it and surrendered. The other, having broken her leg in her fall from the upper deck, surrendered without any further resistance at the promise of splinting her injury.
“I can’t believe you shot her…” she muttered. “She had the only tool for fixing the engines, and now it’s lost…”
“Then she shouldn’t have reached for it in the middle of a fight,” Justin muttered. “That was her own damn fault.”
“So that’s why you were trying to sabotage the sail rig.” Though from her tone, there was little doubt in Roxy’s mind that that was what they were up to from the start. “Mercer was pissed, to say the least.”
“Yeah,” she replied, “well he wanted us to ambush your representatives in the ballroom, cut you off from behind, but we didn’t really believe he would keep his word…”
Wincing at her leg as they hoisted her up.
“Treachery all around,” Max observed.
“You’re probably right,” Roxy said as they led her away with her companion.
They, in turn, were taken to another room across the corridor, which they had also previously jury-rigged to serve as a makeshift brig. Roxy stripped a med kit of anything that could be readily weaponized, and tossed it in their impromptu cells for them to patch up their injuries. All of them agreeing with Roxy it would be best for all involved to keep the two groups of prisoners separated.
It was in the midst of this that a certain butler poked his head out from one of the other doors.
Only to find Roxy’s sawed-off disrupter barrel pointed right in his face.
“Your timing is hazardous to your health,” the bounty hunter informed him.
“Oh dear…” Sebastian put his hands up even as her weapon went back down.
“Sebastian!” Maximilian greeted him, “It’s such a relief to see you again!”
“Don’t worry, Young Master,” Sebastian told him, already visibly regaining his composure, “Bandit is fine, as well, Max. So… I take it you were successful in regaining control of the ship?”
“Almost,” Maximilian answered.
“But we’ve still got some unfinished business with the helm,” Roxy reminded them.
Max took a moment to check on his feline friend before he rejoined her and Justin up top, where they cautiously approached the door to the bridge.
“Who’s there?” demanded a voice they all recognized now, from the door last night, and the radio earlier. “Tell me the password, if that’s you, Mercer…”
“I’ve got your password right here,” Roxy declared, firing up her laser staff.
“No need for that!” Justin added, aiming his crossbow at the door. “I’ve got an explosive bolt that’ll take out that door with one shot!”
“Don’t you even think about it!” Mercer’s second warned them. “I’ve got grenades, and I’ll blow us all up if it means I won’t die alone!”
“Not this shit again…” Justin muttered.
“There’s no need to do that,” Roxy called out. “If you come quietly, Vandenberg is offering you imprisonment as an alternate to death. What say you?”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You don’t have to,” Max pointed out, “but I don’t think you really want to die, do you?”
“Well, no…”
“Mercer’s already lost,” Roxy told him. “You’re all that’s left. There’s no reason to fight anymore. If you’re willing and able to help us fix the ship, there might even be amnesty in it for you.”
Both Max and Justin looked at her for a moment in surprise at that, but decided to see where she was going with this.
“You promise you won’t kill me?”
“Not if you cooperate,” Max promised.
A moment later, the door opened, and Mercer’s second stepped out, hands behind his head.
“Smart choice,” Roxy remarked, stepping up to search him thoroughly.
“I guess you would’ve found out in the end,” the man, who looked somewhat older than most of Mercer’s crew, confessed, “but I have no grenades. Only Mercer did, and he was planning to use them for some kind of trap…”
“We know,” Justin covered him while the bounty hunter conducted her search.
“Well, while you’re not killing me and all,” he volunteered, “let me tell you something else. We have a radio scanner up here. It detects signals from radio sources and pinpoints their direction…”
“I know what a radio scanner is,” Roxy retorted. “A lot of big ships have them. Get to the point.”
“We got a signal the other day. We couldn’t get a fix on its exact direction, but we started sailing on a general heading based on it. Then the Cyexians cut off the power, and we couldn’t follow the signal anymore. All this time, I’ve been trying to keep us on course…”
“I see. But without that signal, you have no way of knowing if you’re still on course.” Roxy nodded. “There’s a reason Mercer kept you up here, away from all the fighting, all this time. You’re the one he was counting on to fix the engines, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s why Mercer made you his Number Two,” Roxy summed up. “Well, a lot of things on this ship are still in need of fixing, if you want to earn your freedom when we reach dry land.”
The man nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
With that, Justin took the helm to keep the Excelsior on as steady a heading as he could without any leads, while Roxy and Max led their prisoner down to the engine room.
As expected, the door to the engine room was closed. While Max covered the man, Roxy chopped the door down, immediately ducking out of the doorway is case the pirates booby-trapped it or something, but that turned out to not to be necessary.
On her signal, Max brought him forward, and they entered the room. Pots and pans, blankets and scattered supplies, among the scattered machinery made the chamber look like a surreal campsite. Much to their relief, they found no stray enemies, meaning that the other two were likely telling the truth.
Though neither of them were mechanically inclined, it didn’t take a genius to see they had been busy dismantling the works these past days, even without the man’s low whistle of dismay.
“So, can you fix it?” she asked.
“What do you plan to do with Mercer and the others?”
“We’re going to turn them in the next place we go,” Max answered.
“What do you care?” the bounty hunter pressed.
“Just because I’m walking away from them doesn’t mean I don’t care,” he shot back. “So what are you going to do if I refuse? Beat me until I can’t work anymore?”
“No,” she told him, “I’m going to tell you the ridiculously obvious. We’re stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere, with supplies running out. Do you want to live long enough to go to jail? Or do you want to go back with them and starve to death with the rest of us?”
“We’re all in the same boat here,” Max summed up.
“I see,” the man nodded. “You need me as much as I need you.”
“So, can you fix it?”
It was the only question that mattered at this point.
“I don’t know…” Looking it over with visible concern. “They did a real number on this thing…”
“Fair enough,” she answered.
“I expect to be set free when we land.”
“If we land,” Roxy conditioned. “In the meantime, I’ll be watching you personally.”
“I figured. But I’m going to need some tools, especially an adjustable wrench.”
“Wait a minute…” Max mumbled, recalling the pirate Justin shot out on deck. “One of them dropped some sort of tool overboard…”
“Shit…” Roxy muttered.
“I’m not making any promises,” the man suggested, “but I might be able to rig up something if we round up all the remaining tools onboard.”
“Then let’s get started,” Max agreed, “Mr…”
“The name’s Rufus.”
Author's Chapter Notes:
all in the same boat
