Chapter 9

The new ship we had designed specifically to hunt pirates was almost ready to launch, 3 days away, and we had not come up with a suitable name. Then it dawned on me! I couldn't resist the pun, based on our Navy's logo, I wanted to name the ship Ruma's Dick ("Dick" as a slang name for police.) Alice groaned when I told her, and I figured that to be all the recommendation the name needed!

We wanted a captain with experience with guns and explosives, so we promoted the first mate of The Venus' Joy to the job. The crew was selected early on and did a lot of practice firing a ballista from a mock-up of the turntable. The captain and the crew spent hours working with the mock-up and mastered its use by the time the ship was ready for launching.

We wanted a turntable that was easy to turn, so we mounted it on rollers. The aiming of the ballista was very flexible because it was adjustable in both azimuth and elevation. Because the system was somewhat complex, we split the aiming between two crewmen, one to set the elevation and one to set the azimuth. A bronze wedge under the ballista was used for elevation adjustments, and the crewman made adjustments with a sledge hammer to bang on the wedge to move it back and forth. The azimuth adjustment was simple, that's what the turntable was for. The crewman simply grabbed a pole sticking out from the edge of the turntable and pulled or pushed it into position.

The ballista crew consisted of 4 people, two to aim, one to load, and one to cock and shoot. The whole crew was cross trained on firing the ballista, so we figured to have a full crew in spite of potential accidents and battle wounds. The crew was filled out with two to work the sail, one to steer, 4 to throw hand grenades and 6 to fire pistols. This meant that the ship would be carrying 21 crew, a cook, and the captain. Everybody would be issued pistols for use in worst-case situations.

As usual with all ships "sponsored" by the Venus cult, the crew had an equal number of male and female members, so that nobody would feel frustrated during a cruise. There was a chance that a ship would be away from home for months, so we wanted every crew to be a happy crew. This method of picking a ship's crew became very popular and actually resulted in several marriages, so Alice and I were happy with the overall plan.

Alice and I went on the shake-down cruise to see if there were any changes that needed to be made in the prototype ship or the crew. We left Ostia and headed west, since that was where there had been many reports of pirates. Not only were there a lot of pirates in this area, but they had been operating in bunches, so that as many as 4 or 5 pirates attacked one merchant ship. This was just too many for one ship to cope with, but our ships had been able to outrun the pirates, so far. Though none had actually fallen into pirate hands, we knew that it was just a matter it time until it did happen.

We sailed for pirate waters full of confidence, because we had a well-trained crew and an experienced captain. But we had a secret weapon that made us virtually invincible: Alice. She could place a lobbed hand grenade on an enemy's deck at 300 yards with uncanny accuracy, and we had plenty of grenades! She was so formidable that we wanted to hold her back in deep reserve so that we could see just what the crew could do if they were on their own. After all, she couldn't sail on all four of the proposed patrol ships at the same time!

The fourth day out from Ostia, we saw our first potential pirate. However, she ran from us before we could make a positive identification, and the ship might just have been a very cautions fisherman. Two days later, we saw a group of 4 ships about 30 feet long and full of men. We knew that these had to be pirates, since there was no room for cargo with so many men on board.

Captain Scotia boldly sailed toward them and the pirates returned the favor. We all had a quartering wind, so we could approach each other without too much trouble, and were within hailing distance within the hour. Captain Scotia was about to hail the leading ship to ask their intentions when we were hailed by the other ship and ordered to heave to in preparation for boarding. This was as near a challenge to a fight as one ship could give another, so we knew that we had found our pirates.

Both ballistas were made ready for the upcoming fight and pistols were issued to every crewman. The hand grenade boxes were placed at the proper locations on the deck and everybody took their action stations. Alice and I stayed out of the fight and let Captain Scotia handle the whole thing. He ordered the two ballistas aimed at specific targets and prepared to sail between them. Once he was within comfortable range, he ordered the two ballistas fired. Both ballista crews must have been nervous from their first battle on a new ship, because neither one scored a direct hit, though both were successful in disabling their targets with their first shot.

Two of the pirate ships were dead in the water and of no immediate concern, but the other two were now too close for the ballistas to be brought to bear. Neither pirate ship presently bearing down on us had a ram, since the pirates didn't want to sink their victim before they had a chance to sack it. Instead, their plan was to grapple with us and overwhelm us with the number of their fighting men. Undoubtedly, the pirates were surprised and overjoyed when they saw that half the crew was female. Not only would this make it easier to overcome us, since pure strength was usually the deciding factor in fights in this era, but there were so many prospects for rape. We certainly made a prised target!

Captain Scotia had ordered his crew to hold their fire with pistols and hand grenades until the other ships got too close to escape. The two ships were on opposite sides of us about 20-30 feet away and swinging grappling hooks when Scotia ordered the first volley to be fired from the pistols. He had no intention of taking prisoners, since he had no use for slaves, so all shots were aimed to kill.

The pirates had no experience with firearms, so were caught completely by surprise by that first volley. The gunsmoke made it hard to see how much success we had at first, but the wind soon cleared it and we could see a number of dead and wounded men on both enemy ships. The pirates attributed the smoke and thunder to the wrath of the gods, so they immediately tried to pull away and escape.

Before they could recover and leave, Scotia ordered a volley of hand grenades to be launched at the pirates. Several of the other crewmen picked up grenades to lob at the enemy, so there were 6 or 7 grenades launched at each ship with his command. Most of them hit the ships and further injured the pirates. This was enough to demoralize the enemy, so much so that they just stood there awaiting their fate.

Scotia ordered a cease fire and addressed the pirates. "WE WILL NOT KILL ANY MORE OF YOU, NOW, IF YOU FOLLOW ORDERS! ALL OF YOU CLIMB INTO ONE SHIP AND HEAD FOR SHORE! TELL EVERYONE YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO PIRATES WHO MOLEST RUMAN SHIPS! WE WILL NOT BE SO KIND, NEXT TIME!"

All of the pirates who could manage it, transferred to one of the two ships which had been attacked by the ballistas and sailed away to the northeast. Captain Scotia sank the other three ships after checking them over for useful loot. The pirates must have come from port very recently, since there was no sign of booty taken from captured ships. We moved on, farther west, in hopes of finding more pirates.

It was a week later and almost time for us to head back to Ostia and Ruma before we saw any more pirates. This was a Ruman merchant ship a little larger than The Ruman Dick. At first, we thought that it was one of our ships headed home from a trading expedition, so we were startled out of our drawers when we were fired upon by a ballista-thrown missile. We didn't know that one of our ships had been captured, so we very nearly found out the hard way! The people on board appeared to know very little about how to aim the ballista; it was an early model with only one weapon per side of the ship, so we knew that it had to have been lost a few years ago. The Venus' Womb was the likely candidate, since it was the fifth ship built and had been lost on its first voyage. This was certainly not the way we wanted to find the ship!