Chapter 329: The Lifeboat Was My New Front Door

The room tilted toward Horass, carrying tools, loose plates and enough filthy water to make his position against the beam look less like restraint and more like a terrible place to wait for a bath.

I caught the koala charm before it vanished beneath the workbench, then pushed it into his coat pocket while the mechanic shouted instructions through the open hatch.

[System: New job, champ. Stop the immediate sinking long enough to get the injured transferred, and there’s twenty-five hundred EXP plus fifteen IP. Try not to steal the rescue boat while you’re feeling helpful.]

I was only interested in a rescue boat if it came with a seat that didn’t hate my spine, which currently seemed like an ambitious luxury request.

The mechanic and another crew member secured the cargo load from the protected upper platform. I stayed clear while they worked, because pretending I understood a damaged winch would have been a stupid way to kill the person I had just spared.

They needed the passage door closed to limit the flooding. Its handle had broken in the impact, leaving a heavy loose tool chest wedged across the lower edge where water kept pushing it back.

The chest’s center sat inside my theft range. I found clear space against my coils, stole it, and nearly followed its weight off the shelf before dropping it into an empty maintenance recess.

The mechanic pulled the door shut while I moved away. He sealed it, checked the remaining flow and called for the emergency pumps, which started with a grinding noise that sounded like the ship protesting extra work after being shot.

The water didn’t disappear. It stopped rising as quickly, then settled below the high shelf while the crew checked the next compartment, giving us a temporary improvement instead of a magical repair.

Horass waited while the workers took strain off the trapped cable. When it loosened, he slumped sideways with an ugly breath, and I used tendrils to guide his shoulder onto the padded board they had brought down.

I couldn’t lift him like a sack of groceries. The crew handled his weight, secured him properly and carried the stretcher toward the outer hatch while I followed with my fins shaking from the effort of staying level.

Bridget appeared at that hatch wearing a borrowed rescue jacket over her clothes. Behind her, the response launch rose beside the vessel, held in position by its crew while Lukas worked the light controls under their directions.

She had arrived by boat, after a real trip that I had spent making worse. Seeing her still made me want to act as if the universe had delivered my favorite person because I had finally earned a break.

"You looked unfairly good in emergency clothing, love, and I would like to file that complaint before somebody strapped me to a board."

"You could file it after the medic checked your jaw, because I was not letting flirting replace an examination tonight," she said, keeping one hand near my sore side without pressing it.

[System: Sensible woman, mate. Your current seduction technique sounds like a shopping trolley trying to reverse over gravel.]

I had received better reviews before the tree punched the packaging, and I expected that to be considered in the final score.

The launch medic checked my breathing, burns and bruises before clearing the transfer. Horass went across first, restrained for transport with his agreement and watched by a guard who looked deeply unimpressed by the size of the patient.

Lukas met my eyes from the controls and told me the storage case was still safe at the guarded dock. The baitfish were alive, the spare fittings were accounted for, and none of that had required keeping a mercenary as a souvenir.

I told him I appreciated the update. He said he appreciated every conversation where I came back in one piece, even when the piece looked as if somebody had tried returning it without the box.

Once we were aboard, the vessel’s mechanic confirmed the pumps and sealed door were holding. A recovery tug had been dispatched, and the remaining crew stayed to manage the damaged ship instead of pretending my departure solved everything.

[System: Transfer done and the immediate sinking held, ya lucky mongrel. Fifteen thousand EXP out of a hundred thousand, two hundred ninety-five IP, and another doctor about to ask whether stupidity ran in the family.]

I would give him the family tree and let him bill the evidence separately.

At the dock clinic, I paid twelve hundred credits for our initial treatment and scans, leaving fifty thousand three hundred twenty in my own account. Horass’s continuing care remained his problem, and I made sure he heard that before generosity became a subscription.

The medic cleaned the reopened fin burn, wrapped my side and warned me that soreness would outlast my patience. Horass needed more treatment for his injured leg and stayed under observation rather than walking out as my new bodyguard.

Bridget sat beside my padded bench while I called Lyra and Cherry in Twawi. Lyra asked for the medical instructions, Cherry demanded proof I had actually stayed for treatment, and neither accepted a joke instead of an answer.

I sent them the clinic receipt and let Bridget confirm the rest. It felt embarrassingly good to have people who wanted me alive badly enough to be annoying about it.

The guard took the recovered weapons into custody and recorded where we had found them. Horass gave his details himself, and I left the investigators to decide what questions came next rather than announcing that sparing him had erased an entire evening. He still had my cheap koala rescue tucked safely into his pocket when the nurse wheeled him away.

Then the cow lady called from Udder the Sea. The women I had hired were setting up, the music had started, and a black van had stopped outside with men asking whether the snake had finally come home.