City of Blood and Iron

The Outer Fleet

A deafening siren tore through the stormy night air as three massive warships cut through the dark waters of the bay, pointing their heavy cannons straight at our platform.

The red warning lights flashing across their steel hulls painted the entire harbor in a harsh, bloody glow. We had just defeated Marcus and destroyed the local ledger, but the victory lasted barely a few seconds before a new, much larger nightmare arrived right on our doorstep.

"Get down!" I shouted, grabbing Arthur by his jacket and pulling him hard behind a thick concrete support pillar just as a bright beam of light swept across the docks.

Elena did not hide. She stood right out in the open, her feet planted firmly on the wet metal grating. The amber light flared around her hands again, burning brighter than before, but her face was completely calm. She looked at the approaching fleet with a cold, fearless stare that showed no sign of panic.

"They are not here to negotiate," Elena called out over the howling wind and rain. "That is the outer faction fleet from across the border. Marcus must have sent a distress signal before we dropped him into the sea."

Arthur pressed his back against the concrete pillar, his breathing ragged and uneven. He stared out at the warships with wide, terrified eyes. "No... that is impossible. The outer faction fleet belongs to the High Council. They never interfere with municipal debt collection unless..."

"Unless the entire city contract has been reset," I finished for him, looking down at the wooden stamp in my hand.

A loud mechanical voice boomed across the harbor from massive speakers mounted on the front of the lead warship.

"Attention, Seattle district. This is General Vance of the High Council fleet. The local master database has been illegally deleted. You are all ordered to lay down your weapons and surrender your bloodline tokens immediately. Any resistance will result in the total destruction of the harbor."

My heart skipped a beat at the name echoing across the water.

"General Vance?" I turned to look at Arthur, my voice rising in disbelief. "That is your name. Is that another one of your relatives?"

Arthur closed his eyes tightly, pressing his hands against his face. "My older brother. The one who took control of the High Council twenty years ago when I was sent down here to build the local grid. I thought he stayed in the capital. I did not know he was watching the entire time."

"So the whole city was just a family game to you people," Elena said, stepping closer to Arthur with a dangerous edge to her voice. "You built the cages down here, and your brother held the key from up top."

"Elena, we can argue about family history later," I said, dodging to the side as a warning shot from the warship slammed into the water fifty feet away, sending a massive geyser of freezing foam crashing over the platform. "Right now, we have an army of warships pointing their guns right at us."

"We do not need to fight an entire army," Elena replied, a sharp, cunning smile touching her lips.

She turned around, looking at the broken control console where Marcus had stood just minutes before.

"What are you planning?" I asked, walking over to her side.

"Marcus thought he was the only one who could use the red stamp," Elena said, reaching down into the wreckage and pulling the cracked, glowing piece of red metal from the puddle. "He forgot that the High Council uses a shared frequency. If we can override their signal using our wooden stamps, we can trick the fleet into thinking their own flagship is sending a recall order."

"That is suicide," Arthur warned, crawling out from behind the pillar. "My brother's security firewall is designed to fry the brain of anyone who tries to hack it without a Council clearance code."

"Good thing we never played by their rules," Elena snapped back.

She grabbed my hand, pressing my wooden stamp directly against the cracked red metal of Marcus's device.

A blinding bolt of mixed amber and crimson light shot straight up into the stormy sky, piercing the dark clouds and casting a massive, glowing grid across all three approaching warships.

Instantly, the loud sirens on the warships cut off. The giant cannons hovering over our heads stopped moving, locking upward into the sky.

On the deck of the lead ship, a tall figure in a heavy military coat stepped out to the railing, staring directly at our platform through a pair of binoculars.

"Who goes there?" a harsh voice echoed through the comms.

Elena stepped right to the edge of the platform, raised her hand high into the air, and shouted across the water so loud that the whole harbor could hear her.

"Tell General Vance his niece says hello!"

With a hard flick of her wrist, she crushed the red stamp into pieces.

Across the bay, the lead warship’s primary control panel sparked with a massive burst of blue electricity, and all three ships suddenly powered down completely, drifting helplessly in the dark water.

Silence fell over the harbor, save for the steady patter of the rain.

We stood there on the edge of the platform, catching our breath, thinking we had won. But a second later, the sky above the warships lit up with a hundred bright red warning flares, and the sound of hundreds of heavy parachutes opening filled the dark air all around us.