Opperation: Smoked Brisket

“Meadowmere! We’ve arrived at port! Now get off me ship!”

There’s a rise in commotion as the passengers start to gather their things and finally disembark from the vessel they’d been stuck on.
Most of them, at least.

Several have more supplies than they could carry, requiring a few trips on the gangplank among the migrating crowd. Sam took it upon herself to help them out by carrying a crate or two. Up and down the gangplank with rations, potions, and Consortium supplies she goes, slipping through the crowd with a nod and smile. She’d weaved in and out of the crowd unloading cargo often enough that the Captain didn’t bother to waste her time by asking what she was doing back on the ship. The sooner everything was unloaded, the sooner they could leave these walking danger magnets behind.

There was someone else being helpful among the crowd as well. Someone who’d stepped aside to fully express gratitude on behalf of Meadowmere for allowing their safe travel. As well as ask a few questions- Orc to Orc- about how the Vertigron Orc culture overlapped and expanded into the survivors who found refuge in the aisles. Truly, a fascinating phenomenon of willpower. Bruzog hadn’t seen any group like them so far in his travels and had wanted to share his respect for them before he stepped back onto the mainland.

What was most helpful was when Bruzog slipped that box of matches to Sam behind his back right as she slipped down to the lower deck, completely unnoticed.

Sam could actually still hear Bruzog up there chatting up the Captain in a very Mayor like tone. At least, she was pretty sure it was his mayor tone. She had never met a mayor before she’d met Bruzog, so everything he did had a mayor like tone to her. Whatever it was, it was working. It kept the Captain distracted as she rummaged around searching for those remaining boxes of explosives she’d seen talking to Marcus when he’d been held prisoner. Lucky her, they were in about the same place as she’d last seen them, only slightly mixed with the rest of the smuggled cargo during the voyage.

Using a knife she’d “borrowed” for the job, she pries open the lid of one of the boxes just wide enough to check what’s inside just to be sure. One eye squints, but she can’t see anything past the pitch black of the inside of the box. She huffs in annoyance only to immediately regret it as the whiff of black powder she gets is strong. Strong enough to make her nose wrinkle and then twitch and then-

Barely does she get a hand up in time to pinch her nose to stop the sneeze. She does, however, lose the support of her good hand on the box and end up fumbling it. A desperate lunge keeps it from colliding with the floor entirely, but she does manage to bang her knee into another crate with a solid thud.

Sam freezes, holding her breath as the Captain’s garish mummers come to a halt. For a moment, she thinks she’s botched the job entirely and is going to have to do plan B, as much as her injured wrist would despise it.
Just as those heavy boots creak the boards above, and she begins to reach for her sword, a voice interjects-

“Before I leave, I wished to commend you on your prowess in battle. You faced the dangers of the seas with great skill I can only assume comes from well-earned experience. You were swift and merciless, a credit to our kind. Tell me… how did you come to be such a great Orcish warrior?” There’s a low growl that accompanies his words that implies a hint more than just gratitude.

The shifting creaks stop, and Sam could practically hear the way the Captain perks up when he clears his throat, “You gain a lot of knowledge from managing your own ship on these seas…”

Sam lets out a breath as the voice fades and creaking moves away from the stairs.

Not one to waste a second chance, Sam grabs the box and starts to shake its contents out across the floor, creating a winding path for a fuse across the whole lower deck. She even grabs a second box to do the same just to make sure and really get the job done. If the remaining firepower wasn’t enough to blow a hole in the hull and sink this vessel, it would at least send it up in flames to burn to useless ash.

Regardless of how it happened, Sam is certain this boat nor its Captain who will go down with it will remain by the end of the day.
Good riddance to both.

It’s at the tail end of Bruzog’s creative flattery of the Captain’s violence that Sam takes her cue to strike the match and drop it on the far end of the fuse. The flame picks up with a poof! and starts to travel its way down the winding line as she turns heel and heads to the designated porthole. If that giant nautiloid could snatch a person through one, then she should be just fine to leave on purpose through one!

As she climbs up onto the pile of cargo covered by an overstretched tarp to reach the exit facing the dock, she realizes something. This cargo is too misshapen to be crates of weaponry or fairy berry. They’re almost… rounded. Despite the weight of the clock, Sam pauses her escape to lift up a corner of the tarp and check beneath to see what she’d climbed up on.

Her eyes widen, and she glances over the floor completely dusted in a fine layer of black powder going up in flame.

“Oh f-”
—
Bruzog waits about halfway down the dock for Sam, as agreed upon earlier. He’s just barely gotten there and started his act of being unsuspiciously casual about taking in the views of Baahir when said partner in crime justice comes up to him at a pace too quick to deliver only good news. He doesn’t have the chance to ask if something is wrong before she grabs his arm and pulls him along, still walking with haste.

“They were smuggling Vertigrog. Like a lot of Vetigrog.”
Sam glances at Bruzog, who furrows his brow in thought, not picking up the implications of what she said immediately.
“I didn’t know they were smuggling Vertigrog. And I used all of the black powder to set it up. Like all of it.”

Bruzog’s eyes widen at the realization, darting a quick look at the ship and then back to Sam. He lets slip “Skoj” as barely a whisper, then gives a low bark of “Run!”

They get to the end of the dock in a sprint just as the ship goes up in a BA-BOOM! WHOOSH!

The force shatters through the harbor, ships rocking against the dock with the shock-waves and water rebounding as they tug back and forth. There’s a rush of commotion as people scatter in a panic and try to get their wits about them. A giant ball of fire slowly sinking at the edge of the port is all that’s left to explain what happened.

Bruzog and Sam, like many others, lose their footing in the wake of the explosion. They stay at a safe distance to keep from getting trampled in the chaos to catch their breath. It’s a good opportunity to watch the boat that hadn’t even made it out of the port be given one hell of a funeral at sea.

Sam twists herself into a crouch and sucks in a breath through her teeth with a grimace.
“Don’t… Don’t tell Tannas I did that.”

Bruzog rolls onto his back with a groan, “Wouldn’t dream of it. This is on a need to know basis, and I think he’ll be happier in ignorance on this one….”

There’s a moment of silence that passes between them before Sam slowly raises a fist to Bruzog without looking away from the monstrosity on the water.

“…Operation Smoked Brisket: Sucess?”

Bruzog looks over at Sam’s raised fist and meets it in kind with his own, likely making contact overhard as he was known to do.

“I don’t know what a ‘briskot’ is, but the people we wanted dead are, so I would count this as a victory, yes.” He gives an affirmative grunt as he stands and dusts off before offering a hand up to Sam. She answers with a crooked grin and clasps their hands to accept the help.

Not wanting to get tied up in whatever remained, the two split up to rejoin Meadowmere and give their alibis to anyone who’d question their sudden missing whereabouts. But as she goes, Sam can’t help but give one last glance over her shoulder. She hoped the flames cleansed the pain that ship and it’s monster had brought, if not from all the souls held against their will, at least for the man who grieved a mother he had never known because of it. She hoped this would give him some solace to the burdens he held onto.

And then she turns and fades into the crowd.