No

“No,” Brenan took great pains to sound as calm and as confident as possible, even if what Sasha was telling him had struck him as being quite unsettling.

“What?” Sasha sounded somewhat startled.

“What other options do you have?” Brenan asked.

“I… I don’t…”

“What other options are there?” Brenan ignored Sasha’s stammering and persisted in his line of inquiry, “If you stay on this island and try finding another ship, then either the Veer will find you or you’ll find another ship and face the same dilemma again.”

“But if I find a bigger ship…” Sasha tried, only to be interrupted by Brenan again.

“Then that will do nothing, one ship won’t be able to defend itself if the best ships in the Veer navy comes looking for it, and the only difference that a bigger crew will make is that it’ll increase the chance of someone saying too much about you while in the presence of Veer informants or agents.”

“Look, but there’s…”

“But what? Not to mention the fact that the one way that they can find about you being aboard this ship as things stand at the moment is if somebody saw me bring you here. And if that’s the case then we’ll all be hunted regardless of whether you stay or leave. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll be bad if they hunt us down and catch us and you’re onboard. But it’ll be a whole lot worse than that if they do catch us and you’ve signed on with another captain, because then the bastards will decide that there’s at least an outside chance that we know where you went and they’ll proceed to torturing us to find out what we know. Which will be a steaming nuisance, because we won’t know anything. And even though my ego will get a nice boost from me not caving in even in the face of ****, I’ll still be fairly annoyed at you when they wrap my mutilated, badly beaten body in chains and toss me overboard to sink down into a watery grave, though at least Kyle, Tyler, Julien, James and Michaels will be there to keep us company, as well as our two female crewmembers that you have yet to meet.”

“Captain…” Sasha again tried to protest, but Brenan was determined to get his point across and therefore brushed aside her attempts to interrupt him.

“The fact is that as long as they’re after you, then whoever you come into contact with will be in danger, and the only way that you can avoid the risk of seeing the ones you care about getting hurt is either to get a lot more callous real fast or by signing on with a crew of utter bastards. I’d appreciate you telling me if you’ll decide on the former, and I’d advice you against the latter, since you’re beautiful enough that the real cut-throats like Black Bart and his ilk would probably sell you as a ****, undoubtedly trade you to the Veer in return for their own safety if the situation came up, and definitely **** you as soon as they were clear of port, to avoid you running away.”

Sasha’s face had lost all of its colour save for her cheeks, which were now vividly red.

“I’m not trying to frighten you,” Brenan decided that it would probably be wise to let her know that, “but you need to understand your situation such as it is. If you want to depart when we get to the mainland and head for a life as a castaway in the White Mountains then that’s fine with me, but until then I think it would be foolish of you to leave this ship.”

Besides, Brenan thought but didn’t say out loud, Sasha’s staying aboard his ship would increase the chance of him managing to convince her of the need to fight back rather than to continue her fleeing. He’d seen enough to know that that was the only way in which Sasha could ever hope to achieve a less terrorized existence.

Besides, if she was as valuable as she said she was, then it was his responsibility to ensure that Veertor didn’t get its dirty paws on her.

“The crew,” Sasha was not so much sad and fearful as downright terrified at this point, “what about them?”

“They deserve to know what we’re up against,” Brenan agreed, “but they won’t have any say in whether or not you’ll stay onboard. Any man under my command who objects to me acting to save a woman from being **** will find himself sitting on his arse on the dock, his nose broken and his services no longer required.”