VANGUARD OF THE BAY

CHAPTER 3: Lightning in the Storm

The three armored figures hit the deck like dropped anchors, the impact sending a shudder through the pooled water on the planks, a ripple that ran out toward my feet where I still lay half-frozen.

The largest of them, wielding two heavy riot shields, plowed into two mercenaries and sent them over the railing into the freezing water with a double splash that barely registered over the storm.

"Form defensive perimeter!" the lead vigilante shouted. His voice was deep, metallic, and completely calm, like he was reading off a checklist instead of standing in the middle of a firefight.

The second, a lean woman with dual electrified batons, vaulted over my body with startling speed, close enough that I felt the wind off her boots. She struck a mercenary in the collarbone, disarmed him in one motion, and swept his legs out from under him before he'd even finished falling.

"Get the fishermen behind us!" she ordered.

"I've got the hatch," the third called, deploying a magnetic net over the syndicate ship's gangplank to seal off reinforcements, the metal humming as it locked into place.

The syndicate leader stumbled back, his men falling in seconds, the fight already lost though he hadn't accepted it yet. He raised his pistol at the lead vigilante and fired three shots, the muzzle flare lighting his face in quick white flashes.

The vigilante stepped forward without flinching and brought up an armored forearm. The rounds ricocheted off with loud metallic pings and vanished into the dark, and for a second I thought I was watching something that wasn't fully real, a trick of the light and the flares and my own battered head.

"Your reign over this harbor ends tonight," he said, taking another step, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world.

Two more mercenaries tried to flank him from the side, boots slipping on the wet deck. Mason caught one with the edge of his shield, sending him sliding into the scuppers, while Valerie's baton found the other across the back of the knees before he'd even raised his rifle. Neither vigilante so much as looked at the men they dropped, moving on to the next threat like the fight was choreography they'd rehearsed a hundred times.

"You think three costumed freaks can stop the Iron Syndicate?" The leader dropped his empty pistol and grabbed a black box mounted on his vest. "I'll sink this whole vessel with everyone on it!"

My stomach dropped. A remote detonator, wired to thermite charges already planted near the fuel tanks, the same charges his men had been ordered to set before the flares went off.

"He's got a bomb!" I yelled, pushing up despite the pain screaming through my ribs, forcing my body to move when it wanted nothing more than to stay flat on the deck. "On the engine block!"

The woman spun around, but the leader's thumb was already on the arming switch. "See you in hell!"

I didn't think it through. There was no calculation in it, no weighing of odds. I just knew that if the bomb went off, Thomas, the crew, and the people who'd come to save us would all go with it, and that was the only fact that mattered.

I threw myself forward and tackled him around the knees just as his thumb came down.

We hit the deck hard, my shoulder taking most of the impact, pain lancing white through my vision. The detonator slipped from his glove and skidded toward the open edge of the ship.

"You insolent pest!" He punched me in the side of the head, once, twice, the second blow landing before I could get my arm up to block it.

Pain exploded behind my eyes and my ears rang, a high thin note that drowned out the storm, but I held on, refusing to let him reach the controller, my fingers locked into his jacket like a vice I couldn't have opened even if I'd wanted to.

"Jax, grab the box!" the woman shouted.

The lead vigilante, Jax, closed the distance faster than a man in that much armor should've been able to. He slid across the deck on his knees and caught the detonator two inches before it dropped into the sea. One squeeze of his fist and it was scrap metal and wire, sparks fizzling out between his armored fingers.

"No!" the leader howled.

Jax stood over us, blocking out the searchlights, a shadow bigger than the man beneath him had any right to be. He grabbed the man by the collar and lifted him clean off the ground with one hand.

"Your contract is expired," he said, and threw him headfirst into the netting of his own retreat vessel.

The rest of the mercenaries, overwhelmed, scrambled back onto their ship and cut the grappling lines to push off, abandoning their leader without a second glance. One of them tripped over his own boots in the scramble and had to be hauled up by a comrade, and even in the chaos it struck me as almost funny, how fast fear could turn grown men clumsy.

The storm seemed to hold its breath for a second before the syndicate vessel drifted back into the fog, leaving our battered boat quiet again, nothing left but rain and the creak of settling metal.

I lay on my back, gasping, rain washing the blood off my forehead in thin pink runnels. Captain Thomas rushed over and hauled my shoulders up, his hands trembling worse than mine.

"Leo. Leo, talk to me, son. You alright?"

"Still breathing, Captain." I coughed up a little salt water and managed a weak laugh that hurt my ribs even more than the punch had. "Did we save the ship?"

"You saved the ship, kid." Hank stepped over, one hand still pressed to his bleeding cheek, his eyes wet in a way that had nothing to do with the rain. "You saved all of us."

I turned my head toward the three vigilantes near the bow, watching the fog where the enemy ship had vanished. The woman reattached her batons to her belt while the big one checked the perimeter, methodical, unhurried, like this was just another Tuesday.

Jax walked over, boots echoing on the wet cedar. He knelt beside Captain Thomas and looked down at me through his visor, and even without seeing his face I could feel the weight of whatever he was thinking.

"That was incredibly foolish," he said. "You could have been killed."

"He was going to kill my family," I said, meeting the dark glass, not backing down even flat on my back with my ribs screaming. "I don't stand by and let people take what belongs to the good people of this city."

He was quiet for a moment, long enough that I wondered if I'd said something wrong. Around us, the crew had started picking themselves up, checking each other for wounds, Hank pressing a rag to his split cheek while Pauly stared at the vigilantes like he'd forgotten how to close his mouth. Then Jax reached up and pressed the release on his collar.