Brigantine Island

By Clement Masloff

PERO ARSLAN becomes a navigator-pilot on a buccaneer ship at the pirate center of Brigantine Island, where this business is legal. But the pirate fl eet is in steep decline due to new defenses of commercial ships with artillery and gyrocopters. He joins those turning to legitimate trade and helps bring vitrified hardwood developed in the tr

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Mulberry Books
• Release date: Nov 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9781950850105

Clement Masloff

The author has been involved with science fiction and speculative literature since teaching himself to read in 1941-1942. He served in the Army as a linguist and translator in four Balkan Slavic languages. For several decades, he taught sociology in Ohio after graduating research in Russian social history. In his retirement years, he has been writing science fiction, a return to dreams of the early 1940s.

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1.

Drinking pivo in a harbor beer hall with his newly hired pilot, Captain Icho Nidat spoke with nostalgic emotion of the time before his own birth.

"Things were much different when our ships were made of hard wood, not today’s iron alloys. There were a lot more schooners in the old-time piracy of yore. It was a different age, and our raiders sailed all over the Interior Sea. My father, grandfather, and great grandfather were involved in the buccaneer trade at various levels, with jobs on clippers and galleons that had wind sails soaring over the ship. Those old schooners were slower and lacked any modern plasma engines. But our predecessors took greater risks than anyone would today.

They were genuine adventurers back then. The pirates of Brigantine Island were known and feared all over, murmured the skipper, picking up his mug and swallowing down a mouthful of dark liquid. Their reputation made them important factors in sea commerce in all latitudes and zones.

The new pilot, Pero Arslan, studied the lionlike face of his employer, a large bruin in his late fifties with copious locks of chestnut brown.

The short, slight navigator had learned his craft on commercial transports and had experience of only two voyages on freebooting raiders. But his own father had from an early age trained him in the secret knowledge of piloting over the varied sectors of the Interior Sea. Pero had impressed Captain Nidat at the short interview of three possible candidates and had unexpectedly won the post on the pirating outlaw ship. Why had he been chosen for the vacant post? Pero could produce no credible answer even for himself. Perhaps Icho had depended on some secret intuition, some instinct gained from years at sea.

The young, tow-haired, hazel-eyed novice was not at all intimidated by the duties and responsibilities that would now be his. This pilot position was what he had dreamed of and aspired to as he grew up as a seaman, mariner, and deck hand on commercial vessels. What could compare with genuine pirating, though? he had asked himself countless times. Finally, I have reached my desired post, he told himself with pride and anticipation. I shall be main navigator of a Brigantine Island marauding privateer. I shall be fulfilling an important function on a sea raider.

I will do my best at the post you bestowed on me, sir, said Pero in a humble, grateful tone. He picked up his big mug and drank a long swig of the island brew.

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Brigantine Island had never enacted or enforced any laws against piracy at sea. It became the refuge of freebooters and swashbucklers who were the scourge of legitimate commercial trade in other areas of the Interior Sea. Many generations of islanders had the knowledge and experience needed for success in raiding the lanes of sea transport.

Even the main island port of Insula serviced and supplied pirating craft, although some adventuring enterprises preferred the many minor harbors available on the outer coastlines of Brigantine.

But in recent decades the legal commercial ships became the dominant vessels using Insula harbor, while the brigand ships tended to gravitate toward the smaller ports. It was an unwritten rule that pirates never raided any vessel whose home was on the island. Native commercial traders were protected by custom, only outsiders could be made victims.

The balance of operations in recent years continued to shift toward legitimate trade and commerce, while piratic raiding on the sea was a falling, shrinking part of the island’s economic activity. Pirate vessels lacked the new plasma engines that provided speed and power to the mercantile craft that could outdo them on the sea.

Captain Icho Nidat was a leading adventurer who continued to return to Insula port for supplies and repairs. In many ways, he remained a traditionalist in the craft he had inherited. Never the first to try out the new, Icho depended on the knowledge passed on to him by forefathers and predecessors. It took a lot of proof and argument to get him to attempt or try the unfamiliar.

His new pilot, Pero Arslan, discovered how conservative his skipper was on their first voyage out into the Interior Sea. Captain Icho preferred to look for lucrative targets in the busy, most used lanes between the major countries on the outer shores.

Why don’t we attempt to find valuable cargos way out in regions of new mining and metal smelting? asked Pero one morning on the bridge of the iron raider. Piracy should be surveying the new products coming out of unfamiliar, underdeveloped areas that were ignored in the past, speculated the pilot. What do you think, Captain?

The latter seemed to make a sour face with a negative grimace on it.

I have never liked chancy gambles, he grumbled. "Yes, we are adventurers, but we should always know what we are doing and play the odds in a favorable manner.

I will go into unfamiliar or unknown regions when I have some kind of idea what might be available to us coming out on commercial transports. We should not be the last to try the new, but I am not eager to be the first either.

Icho fell silent and began to examine the electronic compass board in front of him.

Pero resolved to find a fresh new field and area that would be acceptable to his captain.

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The target picked for attack and looting was a slow, large carrier of metal ore from one of the largest islands in the Interior Sea, transporting the raw material to refineries and smelters on the coast of an industrial region of the mainland. Captain Icho outlined his plan to the officers assembled for a strategy meeting in his ship’s galley.

This big transporter keeps a low speed and has very little armed protection aboard, he declared, standing upright in front of the others. Pero sat close to the front edge of the half dozen top personnel of the pirate vessel.

This material is pretty heavy stuff and will quickly fill up our cargo chambers, continued the skipper. "And the price we will get for it at the far-flung outlaw markets will be below the legal commercial rates for ores. But there is nothing we can do about it.

Pirating ships have always had to dispose of their loot at low price rates. We make up for it with our very low rate of major expenses, cynically grinned the ship commander. We will be able to share our large profit with the investors who are bankrolling our adventurous enterprise. All of us will come out ahead. His dark brown eyes fell on Pero in the front row. Do we have a potential carrier in view on our magnetic screens yet? he asked the pilot-navigator directly.

Indeed, sir, reported Pero briskly. "There is an old, giant ore-ship bearing a heavy load from Bauxite Island to the aluminum plants on the central coast of Forgeland. This target should be easy to halt and then commandeer with a thick barrage of fog out of our brume tanks. There has been constant checking of the conditions and potential operation of our six large evaporators. Everything is ready to go as soon as we reach a rendezvous with the metal ore carrier.

"The grappler arms on our decks are prepared to take hold of the target within seconds of a signal from you, sir.

Everything is set for a successful assault as soon as we meet and come near to the carrier in question, skipper.

Good, said the Captain. Let us hurry our speed and meet with this ship and its waiting prize for us. We may be fortunate that it is not powered by plasma, like so many carriers in our time.

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The twenty-five member crew maintained its silence as the steel raider rushed toward its victim in contemplated surprise.

Thick white fog shot forth from the evaporator tanks on the forward deck. A wall of opaque-looking steam and brume flowed out in front of the pirate ship, rolling toward the ore-carrier. Figures on the targeted vessel were visible, running about its deck in fevered movement and desperate action.

Pero stood at his post on the attack ship’s bridge, beside Captain Nidat and acting as if he had been promoted to second in command. In fact, the pilot found himself taking over new responsibilities on board as time went on.

Icho is taking note of my capacity to accept ever-expanding duties, Pero noted with satisfaction. I never anticipated that I would be so active in the actual operation of this pirate vessel. Increasing responsibilities are being placed upon me.

All at once, the pilot noticed something happening that had not been foreseen by anyone.

The veil of fog approaching the ore-carrier was rising into the atmosphere above the target. It was avoiding the metal ship by shooting upward into the sky above.

The would-be victim ship is saving itself through a clever instrument, Pero suddenly realized. It is not without defenses of its own.

He caught sight of half a dozen gigantic blower devices on the deck of the carrier. These powerful fans were diverting the wall of fog in an upward direction, thereby saving the target from the first step of the attack.

The ore transport had been fitted out with protective technology in the form of wind-making mechanisms that got rid of the invading vapor.

Captain Icho, realizing that he had been check-mated by an unforeseen defensive device, sensed that his pirates had been defeated.

It was useless to try to approach any nearer or attempt to use the grapplers and extension arms aboard. Without a concealing veil of fog, the ore ship was able to speed away in safety.

Icho shouted out a desperate order. Shut off the evaporators and reverse course so that we can get our vessel out of here! he commanded his defeated buccaneers.

2.

Dango Kirp was an Insula merchant who had succeeded in acquiring a small fleet of three commercial transport ships. At an early age, he had decided to forego any pirating activity for the sake of building a reputation in the sea trade beyond Brigantine Island. His specialty developed as carrying raw materials from the tropical islands of the southern areas of the Interior Sea to the industrial cities of the central coastlines. He met with success both in buying island materials at favorable prices and in winning profitable deals selling his cargoes in regions of advanced economic development.

Dango’s reputation as a shrewd trader in oversea commerce rose higher and higher with each passing year. He discovered overlooked products and found unexpected markets in which to sell them. His abilities in dealing with counterparts appeared to be phenomenal. Dango introduced northern zones to foods they were not familiar with. In many senses, he proved himself an ingenious innovator, accomplishing what no one else was able to foresee or envision.

Treating others to his radiant, comforting smile, he overcame the reluctance and suspicions of native business people to foreign merchants who came with new, unfamiliar goods. He had the gift of winning the trust of strangers.

How can I expand my plasma fueled fleet and its reach? the tall, skinny and athletic young businessman asked himself every morning and every evening.

Dango could never be satisfied with established, traditional patterns already set in his profession. His mind sought the new, even the untested and still unproven. He was a person willing to risk everything on a single project or trading deal. There was no trace of fear in either his thought or his actions.

It was not easy to gather and assemble capital on Brigantine Island, where the biggest risk-takers were the pirates who roved the open sea, searching for wealth they could take and make their own.

Money-lenders and banks were tight-fisted and skeptical of anything that seemed too adventurous or speculative.

Dango surveyed and studied the lending institutions and private investor scene of Insula, until he settled upon one important member of