Dragon At Heart

Chapter 18

18. Dangerous Waters

"Now what?" Prince Zuko asked as he stepped on the deck. Before anyone had time to answer, however, the chaos around him finally registered. Looking around, it wasn't hard to guess what had caused the noise.

Zuko hadn't ordered the catapult to be put on the ready, but it was up on the deck nonetheless. What was left of it, anyway.

"Who did this?" Zuko's brows furrowed.

Most of the crew was there, probably having come to see what had exploded. Now they were busy looking innocent and avoiding his gaze.

That's it.

"Are you telling me that no one saw anything? 'Cause this thing did not happen on its own", Zuko was almost shouting. Either his crew was much more incompetent than he had ever realized or they were all in this together.

"Sir", Lieutenant Jee took a few steps towards him, a stern look on his face, "I take full responsibility for this."

That took Zuko by surprise. It took him a moment to process the information.

Before the Prince answered, he made sure his voice sounded calmer. He had promised.

"Okay, but you didn't do this, right?" Zuko wanted to be sure.

"No, sir, but it shouldn't have happened under my watch."

Zuko felt like retorting 'got that right', but he didn't. He was, after all, at least as much to blame as the Lieutenant.

I should be the one apologizing to them. I shouldn't have let this happen. Not on my ship.

Zuko would get to the bottom of this.

ooo

The positive thing was that no one had been seriously injured in the explosion. Also, although the catapult was beyond repair, the explosion hadn't damaged the ship's hull or any other vital elements to their traveling.

In Iroh's opinion this was too fortunate to be a coincidence.

It meant that the saboteur was familiar with explosives. Also, that he had no intention of killing them all. That was positive, too.

The catapult had no significance in getting them to safety. Loosing it was nowhere near as problematic as loosing the engine had been.

The worrying part was that they had no idea who had destroyed the catapult or even how he had managed the deed. There were no explosives aboard the ship, so either someone had smuggled some on board or they had used advanced firebending.

If the answer was the latter, it would certainly narrow down the list of suspects. A bit too much so. Iroh didn't believe anyone other than he himself or his nephew had the raw power and the finesse it took to pull something like this off.

Zuko was even more moody and quiet than he'd been earlier, which by itself was quite an achievement. The boy blamed himself for not having caught the saboteur before he struck again.

The Prince was now going through the wreckage one more time, trying to find anything that might give them a better idea of who was behind these attacks.

The rain was pouring harder by the minute, and Iroh could already hear thunder in the distance. They were running out of time.

Another attack so soon and on such a public place was bound to raise suspicions, which meant that either the saboteur was getting worried he'd be caught soon and had decided to act when he still could, or he was getting cocky.