VANGUARD OF THE BAY

CHAPTER 2: The Shadow over the Deck

"Look what we have here," a tall man in heavy black tactical armor sneered, stepping down from our gunwale onto the wet deck. "A little deckhand holding a fishing tool. How sweet."

Behind him, five more mercenaries dropped onto the boards, boots landing with heavy thuds that shook water off the railing. Full-face helmets, glowing red visors, shock batons and auto-rifles. The Iron Syndicate was notorious for harbor raids, but they'd never come this close to the city center before. Marcus had pulled back the local patrol to give them free rein, and it showed in how casually they moved, like men who knew nobody was coming.

"Drop the hook, kid." The lead mercenary raised his baton. Sparks arced along the metal tip, popping in the rain, bright enough to leave a ghost image on my eyes when I blinked. "Or I'll cook you like one of those fish in your hold."

My arms shook from the weight of the hook, or maybe just from everything else. Six months ago I wouldn't have known which end of a gaff hook to hold. Now it felt like the only solid thing left in the world, cold iron biting into my raw palms, and I held onto it like it might keep me from drowning in more than just the storm.

Captain Thomas and the rest of the crew filed out of the wheelhouse behind me, hands raised. I heard Hank muttering something under his breath, half a prayer and half a curse, and I didn't look back to see which. Behind him, the younger deckhand named Pauly stood frozen in the doorway, too scared to come out and too scared to run, until one of the mercenaries grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the open with the rest of us.

"Take the fish, take the ship!" Thomas shouted over the wind. "Just let my crew go! They're simple working men, they've got families waiting on them!"

For a moment the mercenary leader actually seemed to consider it, his visor tilting toward Thomas like a man weighing whether mercy was worth the extra minute it would cost him. Then he shook his head, slow, almost regretful, and the moment passed.

"Shut up, old man." The mercenary leader turned his visor toward Thomas. "Orders from the top are clear. No independent ships return to port tonight. Aethelgard Bay has new owners, and your little operation is officially liquidated." He signaled his men with two fingers, lazy, like he was ordering a round of drinks. "Set the charges on the engine block. Throw these fools in the sea."

"No!" I lunged forward with the gaff hook.

I swung it with everything I had, aiming for the leader's weapon. Metal collided with the baton in a shower of yellow sparks, and the impact numbed my fingers all the way to the elbow, but it knocked the baton clean out of his grip and sent it skittering across the wet deck.

"You brave little brat." He stumbled back a step, then steadied himself and swung his armored gauntlet into my chest. The plate caught me square in the ribs and dropped me flat on the deck, the air gone out of my lungs so completely I couldn't even manage a sound. I lay there for a second, staring up at the rain falling toward my face, unable to do anything but feel my own heartbeat.

"Leo!" Hank started toward me, but another mercenary struck him across the face with a rifle butt and sent him sprawling beside me. He landed hard, one hand pressed to his cheekbone, blood already welling between his fingers.

"Pathetic." The leader stepped over me and drew a tactical pistol, aiming it at Captain Thomas's head. "You should have taught your boy some manners, Captain. Now you get to watch him drown after you take a bullet."

Thomas didn't flinch. He stood with his shoulders back like a man twice his age with nothing left to lose. "You can kill us, but you'll never own this bay. Someone will stand up to you. If it's not me, it'll be the next man, and the one after him."

"Nobody is coming to save you." The mercenary's finger tightened on the trigger. "The city belongs to the dark now."

My lungs burned, half-collapsed, useless. I tried to pull myself up, hands slipping in the seawater pooling through the gunwales, my fingers finding no purchase on the slick boards. I couldn't protect my parents' legacy, and now I couldn't even save the man who'd pulled me out of the storm not twelve hours earlier. Every part of me screamed to do something, and every part of me was too broken to answer.

Somewhere behind me one of the crew was crying, quiet, defeated sobs swallowed by the wind. Pauly, probably. I thought of my father's funeral, the rain that day too, the way Marcus had stood at the front of the chapel in a suit that cost more than most of these men made in a year, and how I hadn't understood yet what kind of man he really was. I understood now. Understanding it wasn't going to save Captain Thomas.

"Stop." I forced the word out, reaching a hand toward him, barely more than a whisper against the rain. "Take me instead."

"Goodbye, Captain."

The hammer pulled back, sharp enough to cut through the storm, a small mechanical click that felt louder than the thunder.

Then the sky exploded into white light.

Three flares burst above the ship, blinding the mercenaries. "What the devil is that?" the leader screamed, dropping his arm to shield his visor as the optics overloaded, the whole deck suddenly lit up like midday.

High on the syndicate ship's crane, three figures stood against the storm, carbon armor with blue crests glowing across their chests. Capes whipped in the gale, but their stances didn't waver, planted like they'd grown out of the steel itself.

"Look up!" one of the fishermen gasped, his voice cracking with something close to disbelief. "It's them! The Shield Bearers!"

I'd heard the name whispered in the fish markets and taverns of the lower district, half legend and half rumor, the kind of story dockworkers told each other to feel less afraid. I hadn't expected them to be real. I hadn't expected anything to be real, standing on that crane, backlit by lightning.

Before the mercenaries could raise their weapons, the three leaped off the crane and dropped straight into the chaos below.

For one strange, suspended second, everyone on that deck went still, mercenaries and fishermen alike, all of us watching the same three shapes fall through the rain like something out of a story none of us had believed until now.