The long boat pulled alongside and the crew started hauling in the booty retrieved from the water; the surviving crew and passengers of the doomed ship now beginning to slip beneath the waves. For all of the day’s maneuvering and posturing the battle only required a single shot from Goreethmorug, the aft-mounted cannon. Peg Leg’s ship had been no match for them and their hellish rounds.
Goreeth detached and clattered down to the main deck. His -it’s? – last human eye scanned the loot. “A good haul, captain,” he said.
“No Bastable though,” Maria replied.
“No. Escaped through the time streams, most like.”
Maria looked out over the alien sea. There was no life in this sea. No life anywhere they’d been while they hunted. Perhaps she’d sent the last life on this world to the bottom. “These colours bore me. Take us somewhere else. Somewhere with…slavery.” She didn’t stay to watch Goreeth winnow through the captives, discarding the sick and injured over the side and saving one for the engines. She sought her cabin. Later, while drifting in an opium dream, she hardly felt anything when the Rogue Mistress’s diabolic engines powered up and tugged at her soul like a loose thread. A good haul and Bastable would turn up again. As a lover or as an enemy; it hardly mattered which.
