{The "Procyonid" and "Daklian" races are copyright to Jay Naylor and are used without permission.}

"Storm of lead, lads!" old Captain Pedore roared gleefully. "Storm of-" He roared again, this time in pain, when he took a ball in his good shoulder and went down on the command deck of his Defier Class ship, a boarding vessel appropriately named the Sea Bastion.

Faithful Tom rose over him and returned a ball to the man on the ship opposite who had done the deed. Trying to sit up, Pedore groaned as the blood seeped through his fingers. "Damn, sir!" Tom scolded. "The crowers are cleared or pinned! Please just lay there while I call Mclean!"

But old Pedore was too gritty to lay down quietly during a fight and motioned Tom to help him to stand. With the Procyonid's help he moved to the closein rail for cover, dragging his musket behind him. "Bind my wound quickly," he ordered through his clenched teeth. While he waited, Tom on his left(the stern side), he surveyed the positions of the men along the lower railing on the middecks below. There were two barely noticeable trails of blood leading from the rail to the downhatch amidships, probably from arm or shoulder wounds as his. No bodies lay in the clear of the middecking.

"Tom, shout for siege measures," Pedore ordered quietly. "There as been enough blood spilled thus far." Tom nodded and turned just as Pedore rapped his knuckles on the small hatch beside him and opened it.

"Seige!" the Procyonid shouted triumphantly over the lower deck. "Seige! To hell and be damned!" roared the men back at him. They all stood from their cover for a moment in the traditional manner of their Captain's pleasure in bravado, then dove into the clearance areas like madmen.

Ten seconds later a muskiball proof wall of iron plates had risen up from the Sea Bastion's deck along most of the port side railing. The tips of muskets were passed through ovoid slits in the defensive barriers and rested by their mounting hooks in the notches carved into the top of the railing for just such a purpose. Every fourth man was at a feedup hatch to convey the spent muskets below to be reloaded and to receive the primed ones. Siege conditions were set. The Hierarchy merchant mariners would not be boarding without fearing for their lives every step of the crossing. If they were even so foolish as to let be seen their heads.

Captain Pedore knocked impatiently on the hatchcover again and reopened it. "Sorry sir," rose an apologetic voice through it finally. "Do you need another musket now?" "No, laddie," Pedore laughed carefully, favoring his wounded arm as Tom knelt beside him once again. "Young Defki, is it?"

"Yes, sir," came the pleased reply. "What about Tom?" The Procyonid smiled determinedly at his "master". "Nay. He'll have mine," decided Pedore, giving it over accordingly. "I've taken a ball already and I shan't tempt the devil to have my foolish old soul this day!"

Tom nodded his grim agreement and hooked the muskets mounting on the railing behind the Captain. "They are silent as graves," he observed with a hopeful tone. "Aye." Pedore had not failed to notice.

Tom rose slightly in his crouch from his knee and peered for a long moment over the enemy's decks. "No movement to be seen," he reported to his master as he still looked. Slowly ducking his head back down he said expectantly, "Perhaps they are conferring and preparing to surrender?"

"They would be brave fools not to," spat Pedore sourly, grunting at his wounds throbbing. "But we shall-" His last word was lost to a corronade of musket fire from the battery deck, closely followed by answering fire returned from the enemy. Several of the men on deck also let off their rounds and reached for another musket, presumably at the sight of some concerted effort by the enemy marines.

Tom peered discreetly over the rail and took a shot himself, then reported. "Three or four men are gathered on the aft of the command deck and those along the rails are offering distraction as they are able." The Procyonid took the loaded musket offered him by Defki and thrust down the spent one in return.

Pedore was silent at the news, observing a figure coming up from below onto the middecking. "I think I caught a glimpse of their commander," Tom went on, "And I must say it does not appear to me that the fight has gone out of him at all."

Pedore nodded absently as the man he was watching approach leapt up the stairs to the command deck, drawing at least two muskiballs in his wake despite his brief exposure to the enemy's sight. "Doctor," the captain resignedly greeted the dutiously worried man. "What little Daklian told you?"

Doctor Samuel Mclean ignored the jesting question and inspected Tom's binding of Pedore's shoulder. "You just came up from below?" Tom inquired of him. "I did," Mclean admitted with his usual reticent air. "The battery gunners caught their counterfellows lifting their guns to strike through the armor of the middeck and poured solid hell through their cannon ports to reward them for their offensive efforts."

"Damn fools," muttered Pedore with a shudder at the doctor's probing of his wound. "I have a good mind to order the Bastard guns used."

Tom was watching the activity on the enemy helmsdeck, tempted to shout up to the men manning the mast stations to inquire what they could see. He was saved the trouble when an excited voice warned from above, "Flames of Heaven!"

The men along the raised barricade pressed themselves in closer to it and the musket exchange hatches were flipped shut. The eight men stationed amid the Sea Bastion's sails opened fire to avert the offensive measure if possible. Tom noted the result. "They have erected a barricade of smaller cargo crates to shield the position of the catapult," he reported bitterly. "And it is growing along their lower middeck in a chain well back from the railing."

"Too damned clever," Pedore growled peevishly, noting that there was blood dripping from the crowsnest above. "And so too damn bad for them. Run down the Bastards and make terms with them if they can be made to understand their situation without any risks taken," he advised Tom with a nasty face.

Tom rose as the first flaming projectile was catapulted over the waves seperating the two ships and onto the Sea Bastion's starboard side decking amidships, after spinning end over end and spraying burning tar and oil in its path below. Several of the huddled men were aflame from small spatterings of taroil, taking their misfortune calmly as could be while allowing their spared companions to smother the flames of oil with generous helpings of sand taken from buckets which had been passed up through the exchange hatches at the earlier shout of warning from the crower.

Again, Tom's voice was triumphant as he conveyed Captain Pedore's order: "We run the Bastards down now!" All the men on the deck below raised a cheer and fired their muskets in a heralding barrage as he continued. "It is "Surrender or swim" to these Hierarchy mongrels! Let them know that the Sea Bastion is-" The Procyonid received a muskiball in his yet open mouth before he could finish, going down limply on the deck after staggering a few steps in shock and turning away from his master and the doctor.

"Devilhell, Tomelikoo!" cried Pedore in surprise, even as the furious cry rose from the men on the deck below in response to the slave's wounding; "Run the Bastards down! Surrender or swim to hell!"

"See to him doctor!" Pedore commanded Mclean unneccessarily. He took a moment to gather his wits and made a decision, half out of a desire for revenge and half out of his good sense of realistic practicality as a captain and commander. "Defki!" he roared madly. "Yes sir?" piped up the Daklian boy meekly from down below. "Give the order to fire the Bastards, thrice each!" "Yes sir!"

Pedore looked amidships to see that two more Flames of Heaven had boarded his ship in all their bright and painful glory. Several men were badly burned and yet burning. And the enemy sailors and marines had appearantly taken the cry of "Run the Bastards down" to mean that they were about to be boarded, opening fire at anything that moved on the Sea Bastion's decks in a desperate frenzy to discourage any such attempt.

"And what of the happenstance she may carry slaves, Captain?" Mclean dared to venture uncertainly. "The time for terms will come soon enough," Pedore responded firmly, closing his eyes and sighing in pain and sudden fatigue. "How is he?" "I am doing my best, of course, but I cannot dispel my doubts that he will die despite by best efforts," confessed Mclean over the noises of musket discharges and the pained screams of the bloody wounded and the burned. He went on to suggest sorrowfully, "I would be wiser to abandon him to his surer fate and tend to the burned."

Pedore's eyes opened with a wild fury to be seen in them, but it died instantly and he told Mclean forgivingly, "Do what can you quickly and then move on. I always say I do not like to play favorites, though you all know I am tempted as any man. In his right mind, I am sure Tomelikoo would not have others sacrificed for himself, not to hear your bleak estimation of his chances. He respects your skills and judgement very much."

Said Mclean bravely, "Respected..."

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Below, Defki had taken Pedore's orders to the cargo battery stations personally, knowing full well from what he had heard through the exchangeries hatch that his services were no longer needed on the command deck, at least not for a few minutes. By Pedore's order and tone of voice, Tom had been very seriously wounded and so would not require reloads. And it was well known that the doctor himself refused to take up arms, short of joining in a belowdecks seige resistance action after a boarding in full force by the enemy. Which, despite the sounds of hell from above and outside, did not seem at all likely to happen in the young Daklian's trusting and close-minded estimation. The Sea Bastion would never be taken!

Dodging older Feline Ensigns running munitions from the powder and shot hold, Defki decended to the crews quarters deck, ran the passageway and stuck his head down through the open hatch into the cargo hold. Noting the tensed gunnery crews manning the lower batteries he yelled loudly, "Captain's orders! Fire the Bastards thrice!" giving the lackidasical shot runner assigned to service the two firing crews a good start. 'Serves you justly!' he thought with satisfaction, then pushed himself up from the cargohold's hatchway and ran into the Ensigns' quarters - located on the port side - to watch the Bastard gunners breach the enemy ship below her waterline. He cautiously pushed out the musketport hatch cover sunk into the hull just enough to peer out and see the waterline of the Rithanio's Purchaser. He had heard he was too late to witness the first firing, but was well in time to catch sight of the splashes resulting from the second and third firings following shortly.