"The operation was a success," Dan heard Old Raily say through the walkie-talkie, "Using The Squad as vanguards, Leonard and I kept to the back as we followed after them. Arkus was of great help in not letting us lose our way or get ambushed, those three guards knew the mine well, but Arkus knew it even better. Over."

  As he listened to the update, Dan sighed in relief that it all went well in the end. He was worried about how things would go inside the mine, he doubted it would be the same thing as fighting in the open after all.

  "Do you think it's safe enough now? Over," he asked once Old Raily was done with his update.

  "As safe as we can make it," Old Raily answered, "We caught all those we knew about. And besides, after doing a headcount for those we managed to take down, we ended up with 32 in total. That is around how many guards we guessed were left on the island. Some of the rescued kidnappees also said that that seemed to be all of them. Over."

  "So we can go there if we want? Over," Dan wondered. Doing his best not to focus on the number of people they had killed.

  "It needs a bit of a clean up," Old Raily said after a period of silence, "As you might expect, the place here is quite messy after last night's fight. We are currently gathering all those bastards who were working with the guards and using them to gather the bodies, digging the grave and burying them. It's going to take a while, but not that much. Over."

  "That's a good way to deal with that matter." Dan was happy with how they went about it. "But that reminds me, what are we going to do about them? We can't take them with us after all. Over."

  "Honestly." Dan could feel the frown in Old Raily's voice, he always had that expression when he spoke while thinking deeply about something. "There are only two choices I could think of. The first is simply dealing with them, while the second is leaving them on the island. Over."

  Dan fell silent, those two choices might have seemed different, but he knew that they were one and the same. They were after all only leaving the island after dealing with the Deepdark, which would cut their contact with the outside world for months. Dan doubted they would survive all that period without much food, that was all without even mentioning the Harvesters, those bugs wouldn't even leave their bones behind.

  "I will think about it." Dan couldn't bring himself to choose one of those, he decided to leave it for later, they had time after all. "How are you treating the rescued kidnappees for now? Over."

  "We are giving them some freedom," Old Raily said, "They can move around freely, plus we gave them access to the kitchen, so they can make their own meals. Over."

  Dan nodded to himself before bringing up something that they had talked about before.

  "Should we send you Fleta? Are any of them in need of urgent medical attention, ones that the healing potions can't take care of? Over."

  "A few need it." There was a clear hint of anger in Old Raily's voice. "Especially the women used by them for pleasure. I'm sure that those will also need Agatha's help at some point. Over."

  Agatha was Mrs Raily's name, and other than Old Raily, only a few of her closest friends called her that, most people just called her Mrs Raily. Just like how most people called him Old Raily instead of his name, Alfred.

  Dan didn't answer straight away, he didn't want to imagine what those women must have gone through, maybe not just them, everyone on that island must have been living in hell.

  "I will be sending her soon," Dan finally said, "Make sure to prepare things on your side. Also, thanks a lot for your hard work, I appreciate it. Over."

  "No need to mention it, just what we had to do. Over." Old Raily replied.

  With that, Dan sat on the bridge in silence as his mind started wandering to what they needed to do next. The first thing that came to mind was that he needed to go to Nik and Nancy to ask them if they had enough food for the influx of people they were getting.

  The total number of people joining the Voyager was 239, plus Graham, Arkus and Andre, that was 242. Add to it the already existing members on the Voyager, 34 of the original crew plus Nulara and the young man, that would push the total number of people on the Voyager to 278. Their numbers had gone up almost eightfold.

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  Dan knew that they most likely had enough food to last them till they made it to the Dynasty's waters, the trip wasn't that long after all. But what if something unforeseen happened and the trip was made even longer, that would put them in quite a conundrum.

  His next course of action decided on, Dan stood up to leave the bridge, but didn't even get to take his first step. A sudden wave of panic hit him through the connection with the Voyager, followed by a literal wave of aura surging towards him.

  "Big girl, what's happening?" he asked, his heart beating fast. Things changed so quickly that he didn't even know what was going on.

  The Voyager didn't answer, she just linked him to one of the bow's cameras, one that got tilted a bit to port focusing on an empty spot at the ocean, quite close to the island. As Dan focused his eyes there, knowing that the Voyager wouldn't show it to him for no reason, the blurry shape of a ship started becoming clearer in that location.

  Dan didn't know how a ship managed to get that close to the island without them noticing, it was even inside Keith's range and the screen on the bridge showed nothing there at all. Knowing that there must be some pretty strong cloaking skills at play there, Dan's mind linked the ship he was seeing with the Deepdark that they were expecting to arrive in two weeks or so.

  Not having the time to discuss what was happening with anyone, Dan knew that he had to be fast.

  "Voyager, it's alright just calm down, you did nothing wrong," he first calmed the panicking ship before turning to what they needed to do, "Use Boost, get us to them as fast as possible."

  Boost was the skill that the Voyager got at level 15, it let her move three times her top speed at tier 2, and at that moment, it was more than welcome.

  "What the-" Dan heard Freddie shout as the Voyager listened to him and flew towards the cloaked ship.

  Using Boost while the Voyager was stationary was quite the experience, the acceleration was crazy to say the least, one moment the Voyager was just floating there and the second it started racking up speed at an unimaginable rate, especially for a cruise ship as big as her.

  "Everyone hold on," Dan shouted, "The pirate ship is here, it managed to sneak by us and approach the island. Keith, tell the people to hold on for a few moments while we reach our top speed!"

  Not waiting for an answer from her, he turned on the walkie-talkie and contacted Old Raily.

  "Dan here, the Deepdark is here, it managed to sneak by us and is quite close to the island, move everyone away from the shore, who knows what they are going to do. Over."

  "Understood. Over." Old Raily's reply was brief.

  Dan knew that it would take them a while to reach the other ship, they were after all quite a bit far from the island as they were standing in waiting for the Harvesters, having decided that cutting them off before even approaching the island was the right thing to do. That had seemed like a good idea then, but with the hostile ship that close to the island, it put them in quite a spot.

  As Dan was thinking of what they could do next, he connected to the camera again, just to notice something that made his heart skip a beat; the ship seemed to be turning in a weird way, aiming its starboard towards the island.

  "They want to bombard it!" he murmured as the realization hit him.

  The only thing that kept him from going into a full panic mode was how he noticed that their starboard wasn't yet in the right position to shoot at the Island, the Voyager had caught them before things went to hell.

  "Get as far away from shore!" Dan shouted into the walkie-talkie, "They want to bomb it!"

  "Got it." That was all he received, he was sure that Old Raily was busy on the other side too.

  Dan remembered something as he glanced at the screen linked to Keith's skill, he noticed the cluster of orange dots swimming quite a bit away from the Voyager, and pretty close to the Deepdark.

  "Keith, broadcast to Sam to send his Swarmers towards them," Dan ordered, his mind moving to get as many advantages as possible to turn the tables around.

  As Keith's voice spread through the speakers, Dan watched the Swarmers turning red on the screen -meaning that they had entered their enraged state- and were heading to the location Dan gave to Keith.

  Dan was happy to see the other ship start changing its course, it seemed that they had noticed either the Voyager or the Swarmers and decided that getting a clear shot towards the shore wasn't worth it. That didn't mean that they were just giving up like that though.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The continuous sound of cannons shooting was heard as cannonballs sailed to the shore. Dan's anxious heart calmed down a bit once he noticed that most of the shots missed the shore by quite a bit, and the few that did hit it didn't seem to land close to anything important.

  With the shots all missing and the ship on the run, Dan calmed down even further. It wasn't hard to notice that they were moving much faster than the other ship -at least three times as fast- and it wouldn't be long before they would catch up. The Voyager could keep the Boost skill ongoing for 3 hours, and Dan doubted it would take them that long to catch up to their target. And to the other ship's horrible luck, the Swarmers might catch up to them before the Voyager, sealing their fate even more.

  Not long after, Dan noticed the other ship slowing down, as if they had accepted their fate after realising that they couldn't outrun them. Thinking for a bit, he had Sam hold back his Swarmers as they closed in on the Deepdark slowly.