A Pirate’s Life for Me

“There!” yelled a sailor in the crow’s nest. He lowered a scanner back down over his eyes and gestured up at the sky. “Straight ahead and holding!”

Crew members rushed up a sloping deck to man a pair of forward-mounted harpoon guns. A gunner dropped into each seat, secured a safety harness, then aimed out ahead of their ship.

“Ready,” shouted a seated gunner, more crew members huddled around him.

“Steady,” called the crow’s nest.

A sailor at the helm pulled back on a lever, the ship slowing and its front end settling down into the water. “Steady!” replied the boatswain.

The crow’s nest gestured forward. “Fire!”

Baboom!

The dual harpoons shot forward, crossing one another’s path as their rope tether spiraled behind them. Each reached a peak, then arced back to crash into the ocean.

“Reload!” called the crow’s nest.

Crewmembers hacked the harpoon tethers free of the boat, then pulled another spool up ahead of the gun. Two others operated a crank, the two teetering back and forth as they retracted the firing mechanism for the mounted guns. A replacement harpoon, four-feet of barbed steel, was passed to the gunner where he readied it to be fired, then settled back into his seat.

The ship’s front end rose into the air and they readied for another attempt. They continued through the sequence a second time, then began a third.

“Fire!”

Baboom!

It looked like it would be another miss, the two shots crossing ahead of them. One arced downward.

Crash! But the other punched through the sky, the ship slowing and drawing the line taught as if the three-inch-diameter rope was flying a kite.

“Mounting party!” yelled the crow’s nest.

“Ah,” shrieked a writer as a harpoon burst through his screen. He quickly rolled away in his chair as tiny men tore their way out of his writing software as if it had been a shoji screen. In moments, his desk was lined with a crew of eight-inch tall sailors, who formed a musket firing line.

“Fire!”

The sequential popping of guns didn’t cause extraordinary damage, but it was grievous enough when it removed the writer’s eyesight, sending him flailing into a bookshelf as he clutched at his face.

“Charge!”

A fierce melee ensued, the air filling with groans, death throws, and an increasing sequence of wet thwaks!

When it was done, they had lost three sailors. Two were crushed—one under a flailing foot and the other under a book avalanche. The last fell to death, a hit knocking him high in the air where the subsequent landing rendered him as paste.

The surviving crew, blood soaked and weary, made their way back onto the desk. “We lost good sailors this day, lads. But we took down another one of them damnable fate weavers. Ain’t no body gonna tell us how to go about livin’ our lives. It be a pirate life or no life at all!”

“Aye!” came the unanimous echo.

They made their way back through the screen, one of them stopping long enough to pry the ‘esc’ block free of the god’s word board. They’d be needing the bounty for repairs, resupply, and recruiting.

A last pirate made to depart, then glanced back and spit on the desk. “Fuckin’ Writers.”

[Writing Prompt] A fantasy world with an industrial revolution, where Gods are hunted like whales were.