The girls were probably wherever he was.
“We came in with five ships. The boss must already be back at the main ship.”
“Hmm...”
Then that meant we’d have to make it to their flagship.
“We might be able to have the girl come up with some excuse to get us on one of the little ships,” Rosalind said. “But if any of the people we defeated at Ryugu Palace are on board, we’ll have problems.”
“That’s true. They’ve seen our faces.”
Was there any way to keep them from recognizing us? Hmm...
“I know. Can’t we have Raul disguise us?”
“Oh, hmm... Yeah, I guess.”
Raul must have still been a little iffy about coming with us because his answer was mumbled and hesitant. But since he’d already demonstrated his disguise skills for us, I wasn’t letting him out of this one.
“All right, get to work then,” I said.
“...Sure thing.”
Raul put some kind of makeup on us. He then ripped our clothes here and there, adding water and mud to make us look more like pirates.
“I wore this new outfit just for today, too...” Rosalind whispered ruefully.
“Hmm, what else? We could add some grimy capes and bandanas to make you look more like Fam, I guess. They’d help hide your faces, too.”
Raul took a small scrap of fabric out of his pocket. With a flick of the wrist, it grew to hundreds of times its original size until it became a cape like a gunslinger out of the Old West might have worn.
“W-Wow, that’s one heck of a magic trick.”
“Nah, this is just something I bought at the store. The mermaids use something similar to fold up their pants when they want to use their fins.”
No joke, space technology is out of this world.
We spent a couple of minutes getting into disguise, then my cell phone began to ring in my pocket. It was Iris. I suddenly remembered that she’d modified her phone so that she could call me anywhere in the universe. (Though I couldn’t call her back.)
“Hello? Sorry, but I need you to talk in a whisper.”
“Rekka... Where are you?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded nervous. “Tetra and Shirley went to the bathroom and haven’t come back. Hibiki and I searched the third floor, but we can’t find them! And then...!”
“Calm down, Iris.”
She was starting to freak out, so I gave her a second to chill before getting her up to speed.
“We’re about to board a pirate ship.”
“Then I’ll go, too!”
“Sorry, but there’s no time.”
There was now only one ship that hadn’t left yet. There was no time to wait for everybody else.
“Iris, I want you to go help the injured.”
“...Fine. Be careful. And make sure you come back safe, okay?”
“Yeah, leave it to me.”
I hung up and put the phone back in my pocket.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Very well. All right, girl. Come up with some story to feed them to keep them from suspecting us.”
“All right.” Fam nodded unhappily.
We followed her up to the entrance of the ship. One of the pirates saw Fam and looked at us suspiciously.
“Hm? Is that you, Fam? Who are those people with you?”
“The kids are street orphans. The old guy’s a drifter, he says. They want to come with us, so I brought them.”
“...I see. Then get them on board quick.”
The man seemed to find nothing particularly unusual about what Fam said. He let us on without any more questions.
I raised an eyebrow at this development. Rosalind had told Fam to come up with a lie that wouldn’t sound suspicious, and she apparently had done so admirably. But...
“Hey, is it normal for pirates to let drifters and orphans on their ship?” I whispered to Rosalind.
“Well, most outlaws get their start because they’ve run out of food to eat. And sometimes people with nowhere else to go gang up and form groups of bandits or pirates.”
Really? I thought pirates were just, you know, bad guys. People who wanted the chance to hurt others. Of course, some of them probably were, but maybe some weren’t? Based on how nonchalantly the guy who let us in responded to Fam’s story, the Seageists must have been in the habit of taking in people who had nowhere else to go. They were still pirates, though...
When the rest of the crew boarded the ship, we took off. We escaped through the ducts out to the sea, and then we went to the surface. Without the drag from the water, we accelerated and began to climb higher and higher into the air. I looked out the window and saw a huge space battleship in the skies of Berano, far larger than the one I was inside right now.
“So, that’s the Seageists’ ship?”
“It’s sizable, isn’t it?” Rosalind said as she looked up at it, too. “You’d need a crew of 500 to man that thing.”
Raul leaned forward and rested his chin on the top of my head.
“Nah,” he casually said. “Ships of that class all have an autopilot. As long as you’ve got 50 people on the main bridge, you can run it just fine.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. And get off my head!”
“Gyah! Oww!”
Raul bit his tongue when I jerked my head upwards, leaving him squirming in pain.
After that, once we were safely aboard the main ship, we hid ourselves in Fam’s room in the crew block.
“Damn it! I can’t believe they just let people like you on!”
As soon as we got inside and shut the door, Fam started screaming and dropped to the floor.
“Hey, is the charm still working?”
“If there’s nobody around, she can talk freely. It doesn’t go against my orders not to disobey us,” Rosalind said as she lay down on the room’s bed.
“Oh, right. Where is this ship heading?”
“Planet Gail. Our home. It’ll take about two hours at high-speed warp... Gah! Why won’t my mouth stop talking?!” Fam yanked at the corners of her lips.
“Hmm. Now that we know where their base is, can we get the Estashionians to destroy the pirates for us?”
Raul shrugged.
“The reason the Seageists have never been caught, at least if you believe the rumors, is that no one has ever been able to track their ship in warp space.”
“I see. And why is that, girl?”
“The space around Gail has a disturbed magnetic field. Normal spaceships can’t warp through it. Our ship has a special coating, so we can... Jeez!”
Fam started to pound at her head with her fists, but Rosalind paid her antics no mind.
“So, you need some kind of ‘coating,’ whatever that is. I guess we won’t be able to count on reinforcements there. When we leave, we’ll need to steal an enemy ship then.”
“Okay! You just leave finding a ship for the trip home to me,” Raul said.
“Yes, it’s the perfect job for a sneak thief like you.”
As we discussed things, a voice came over the PA system announcing that we were soon entering warp. Warp space was a one-way trip. Even if we saved the other girls now, we wouldn’t be able to escape. We’d have to make our move once we landed at the pirate base. Our job now was to sneak onto planet Gail, get back the girls, and then steal a ship to get out of there.
“They said it would take two hours to warp, didn’t they? Rekka, you should get some rest,” Rosalind said. “You need to conserve your strength.”
“Yeah.”
I borrowed half the bed so that I could lie down, too. Raul came over, as well, but Rosalind kicked him away. Fam was still on the floor pounding at her head.
Tetra, Rain, Shirley... Please be safe.
▽
When we came out of warp, the pirate ship had arrived at planet Gail. If Berano was a blue planet, Gail was a brown one. Almost the entire surface looked like it was nothing but dust and dirt. There was barely any oce
an, but for some reason, the land around that tiny sliver of blue was silver.
“What’s that silver area?”
“Probably what’s left over from a terraforming process. That’s when you artificially change the environment, mostly so that people can live somewhere they normally couldn’t.”
I remembered hearing about something like that to make it possible for humans to live on the moon or Mars one day. With how advanced space technology was, I could believe they’d figured it out already.
The pirate ship landed in a terraformed residential zone, touching down in the water next to what looked like a port.
“Wait, why are we at a port?” Raul asked.
“What kind of question is that? Isn’t that what ships do?”
“Sure, but not spaceships. Can’t you see that building over there that looks like the main dock?”
Raul pointed out the window. I could see a huge building the size of a small mountain.
“That’s normally the kind of place you’d dock one of these, especially when you’ve been off-planet and need maintenance. Is there some reason we didn’t go there, Fam?”
“They’re making a new ship at the factory dock, so this ship can’t fit there... Ngwah!”
It must be tough to be under the control of a charm and not know it.
“How strange. I don’t know much about spaceships, but this one seems quite nice to me,” Rosalind said. “Do you need more firepower?”
“I don’t know. About a year ago, the boss suddenly started talking about building it.” Fam had an unhappy look on her face that had nothing to do with the charm.
There was no point in hanging around, so we decided to make a move. Of course, we didn’t forget our disguises. After asking around a little, we found that Squallow and the girls had gone to the huge facility Raul had pointed out. The locals just called it “the factory.” Apparently it wasn’t just a dock, but also a cybernetics and terraforming lab. In addition, it functioned as a command post for the pirates.
“Why would they take the girls someplace like that?” I asked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Rosalind replied. “We’ll just have to go see.”
Since staying too close to the other pirates would restrict our options, we took a route to the factory that led us down a bunch of side streets. Fam had chosen (at Rosalind’s orders) a road lined on both sides with huge metal boxes. Were they prefab houses? Of course, they were probably made from different materials than what we used on Earth, but this seemed to be a residential area.
“I thought pirates lived on their ships. Or in caves or something.”
“You’ve got some weird ideas, you know that?” Raul said.
Sorry, I only know what I read in manga.
“You can tell from looking at it that this planet was abandoned after it went to rot. There aren’t many pirates who’d go through the trouble of terraforming a place like this. A hideout where you can’t be followed by warp is probably an enticing proposition, but even so...”
“Even so?”
“There are a lot of civilians here.”
“Now that you mention it...”
I realized that the only people I’d seen on this street looked very different than the pirates who’d attacked Berano. Many of them were women or children, and there were plenty of men that didn’t look like ruffians. But that wasn’t the only thing I realized. No, maybe I really did just have weird ideas about pirates. Maybe it was nothing from Rosalind and Raul’s perspectives, but...
We suddenly ran into trouble.
“Oh, it’s Big Sis Fam!”
Fam was walking out in front of the rest of us. The kids who saw her came running up to us.
“You’re back already?”
“Who are those people?”
We were instantly surrounded by children and had to stop.
“Get them off our backs, girl,” Rosalind ordered in a gruff whisper.
“Oh, um... They’re going to be new members of our family.”
“The old guy, too?”
“I’m not that old, kiddo.” Raul winked.
He didn’t seem particularly put off or flustered. He might’ve looked like a wimp, but he was quick on his feet and always on his game.
“Come on, say hello to your new family. Hello!” Fam motioned to the kids.
“Hello!” they all called out in a cheerful greeting to us.
“H-Hello,” I responded, a little stunned.
Rosalind had probably never even met a kid who was friendly to her. She looked absolutely astonished. I was, too, to tell the truth.
All the kids here on this planet were smiling. And it wasn’t just the kids. The adults and even the old people were all smiling, too. That was the biggest discrepancy I’d realized between this place and what I’d thought a pirate planet would be like.
Were these kids kidnapped like Raul had suggested? If so, why did they look so happy? There was a jarring difference between my image of the Seageists and the smiling faces I was seeing.
“Fam, who are these kids?”
“They’re orphans from all over the galaxy. Just like I was. I’d almost starved to death when the boss took me in.” Fam patted the head of one of the happy children. “The Seageists were originally space refugees. The boss brought them all together, but we had to turn to piracy to make sure everybody had enough food.”
“...”
Raul told me they kidnapped children. I had no idea that the truth was the exact opposite. They were helping children.
“That’s how most outlaws get their start.”
Rosalind didn’t seem shocked at all. Was that just the gap in life experience between us?
“We don’t attack the weak. We only take from fat pigs who have far more than they need. And it’s just so we can survive, not so we can have luxuries...”
“I have no interest whatsoever in whether you’re good or evil,” Rosalind said. She then turned to look at me. “Rekka, don’t you go getting sentimental, either. You’re not here to defeat evil or serve the cause of justice, are you? You’re here to save your friends.”
“...Yeah, that’s right.”
The only reason we were here was to save Tetra and the other girls. Nothing else.
“But I might need to rethink some things. That Squallow guy might not be so bad after all.”
“Listen, Rekka. I just told you not to get sentimental.”
“That’s not it. Listen to me.” I cut off Rosalind before she could repeat herself again. “If he was a real bad guy, he might kidnap people or hurt people in search of treasure. But maybe he’s not, right? So there might be some reason why he’s doing this.”
Kult Graphimore, for instance, was just after Hibiki to save his world. For a normally good person do evil things, there’s some reason behind it.
“Rekka might have a point,” Raul said. “I’m a good guy at heart, too, you know.”
“You just do everything on the spur of the moment.”
“Hahahaha.” He just laughed at me.
“Well, I can’t totally agree, but... how about it, girl? Do you have any idea why this ‘boss’ of yours attacked Berano, stole the Mermaid Princess’s Tear, and then kidnapped our comrades?”
“...No.” Fam tilted her head down a little as she answered, and then motioned for the kids to get going. “The boss changed about a year ago. Out of the blue, he started spending all this money on a new ship, and we started doing more raids to get the cash for it.”
“That doesn’t quite mesh with what you just told us.”
Rosalind pointed out earlier that the ship that attacked Berano was already plenty for their needs. It seemed odd that he’d take money they needed to feed people and use it for a ship that he didn’t need, especially when it meant doing extra work to pay for it.
“Did anything else change?”
“...The old boss would never have turned his blade on a kid,” Fam said with a glance in my direction.
I
remembered how surprised she’d been when Squallow had attacked Rosalind. Maybe that was why she’d protected me from him when he came after me.
“I owe the boss my life.” Tears welled up in Fam’s eyes as she spoke. “The boss said he’d make us a real country on this planet. He even had plans to make the soil usable and start schools for the kids. He said that once we all had enough to be happy on our own, we could stop being pirates... And I wanted to help him! But he changed so suddenly... And the rest of the Seageists started acting all weird, too! Damn it! I don’t want to tell you this stuff!”
Fam was yelling, but she started to choke up. She had to stop to wipe away the tears. I didn’t like the idea of forcing her to tell us all this, but maybe it was for the best for her to say it out loud. It must have hurt to keep it inside.
“R...” I whispered.
She nodded and said, “Yup, you nailed it.”
For all her faults, R was quick on the uptake. She already knew that I was going to ask her whether or not Fam was a heroine.
“I see... I’m glad.”
“Glad?”
“Yeah.”
If Fam was a heroine, that meant that I could help her story. I put my hand on her head as she sobbed.
“Cry all you want. And once you’re done, let’s go see your boss. We can ask him why he attacked Berano and stole the Mermaid Princess’s Tear, and why he kidnapped my friends.”
“Huh... What’s gotten into you? Why would you want to know that?”
“Remember what I just said? There might be some reason Squallow is acting this way. If we can figure that out, we might find out what changed him. We might find out some other way to solve all this. It’s just a possibility, but if Squallow really is who you say he is, it’s worth talking to him.”
“Rekka, you always...” Rosalind sighed in resignation.
“Sorry. That’s just who I am.”
She sighed heavily again instead of answering.
“Rekka, don’t tell me you’re seriously going to get involved in pirate problems.” Raul, who didn’t know me well yet, seemed pretty taken aback at the prospect. “Give it up. You’re just a little boy. Why do you have to go that far?”
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 5 Page 8