The battle ended. The Celtic Roamer sailed away, leaving behind a sea of wreckage, flames, and corpses.
The pirates were at a loss. By now, everyone had come to their senses: a gold ship?
There was a very good chance they'd been tricked!
Besides, even if they hadn't been tricked, they wouldn't dare go after the ship that was sailing away.
It had rocket launchers, robots, and a warship.
Pirates in the 21st century were different from those in the 18th. Pirates of old had even dared to target warships, and had sometimes succeeded.
But in the 21st century, differences in technology and social structure meant that pirates could no longer possibly attack such enormous military units. The most they could do was wave AKs around from fishing boats-or, at best, small cargo ships-and scare merchants.
Just knowing it was a warship was enough to make them abandon the idea.
Still, among them were a few bold, idealistic "aspiring pirates" who went against the tide and quietly slipped onto the warship that had been hit by the rockets, then sailed it away.
On the Celtic Wanderer, the Atlas soldiers looked at the warship captains-
When they took the warships, they'd found soldiers tied up on board and brought them along when they retreated.
There weren't many of them, only four in total.
The two warship captains stared wide-eyed. One of them spoke first. "Uh, I know you! You're Frank Castle. I watched your trial video."
Frank sat in a chair and smiled. "I thought it would be banned by the US military."
"It's the internet. If you look hard enough, you can always find things. The whole area around the garrison base is talking about it. People are selling burned discs everywhere. Find an internet cafe, turn on a computer,