Japan, November, 2056

  The R.S. Seraynaty.

  High above Japan.

  Captain Mandrill studied the holographic projection, then the viewscreen and back and forth and back and forth.

  “I’m not a weatherologist, but do hurricanes get that big? I mean in a normal, natural sense.”

  Black storm clouds stretched across the entire horizon.

  Even with it being so far away according to the readings, he felt that he could reach out and touch the black wall streaked with bright flashes of light like there was a killer party or a few million going on inside.

  “Typhoon, captain. Not a hurricane. Not in this part of the world.” Ranger Hannarca cleared her throat. The skyship’s senior tactical officer tapped and swiped at her station. “The typhoon’s size is fluctuating. Readings indicate it’s holding generally steady at approximately 35 KMH on course to charge up the bay and right into Tokyo. Wind speeds are at 210 KMH with peaks at 240 KMH. Diameter at approximately 4500 kilometers. Highest point is approximately 16000 meters.”

  That was a lot of numbers and he needed a few seconds to parse it all and arrange them in his head.

  He could feel the judgment in the glances his young bridge crew shot his way.

  Which was fair.

  He was only an acting captain after all.

  The original senior command crew had been emergency shifted over to another skyship for some kind of super important Quest elsewhere, which meant that the Seraynaty, as the newest skyship with a green crew needed a new captain.

  Somehow, he got the posting.

  Honestly, that had sucked.

  He had been enjoying his job in the archives at Ranger HQ, thank you very much.

  Fuck!

  He really had no idea what all those numbers meant.

  He had skyship training in the simulators and apparently he had done well in those.

  That had to be the explanation for why he got picked.

  It wasn’t like he had wanted the spot, nor did he have connections.

  The last thing he wanted was to be out and about in real danger.

  Still, the last time he played at being a skyship captain in a simulator had to be over six months ago.

  “Understood.”

  He nodded, hoping that they didn’t see the beads of sweat he could feel forming all over his scalp.

  “Captain Mandrill, sir?” Hannarca cleared her throat again. She did that a lot when she got annoyed with him.

  Damn young people these days.

  No respect for the authority of age and rank.

  Granted, he only had maybe five years, max, over these stupid kids and their bright eyes and excited faces when they should’ve been like him and properly clenching their lower cheeks at what sort of eldritch abomination was in that storm.

  Shit!

  A sudden and terrifying thought struck him.

  What if the storm was the monster?

  Nononononono!

  As an archivist by primary class, he had studied a lot of ranger history.

  The Manila Fog Quest loomed large in the back of his mind as it punched through the middle wall and into the forefront like the giant, anthropomorphic picture of red sugar water from those ancient vids he sometimes watched when no one was looking over his shoulder.

  The storm was going to suck out his soul, wasn’t it? Then it was going to enslave him and make him fight for all eternity?

  “Scan for entities, Hannarca.”

  “I’ve been running scans since the typhoon first appeared.”

  “And?”

  “Inconclusive.”

  “Thoughts?”

  “It’s broken every record for typhoons in recorded history and the manner of its formation and its projected track suggests unnatural origins. So, monster, magic, or Skill. All suggest hostile action.”

  No!

  He didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Dissenting opinions?” He polled the rest of the bridge crew. He had almost added a ‘please’, which would’ve made him look like he was scared, which was accurate.

  All agreed with the tactical officer.

  Why do you all look so excited?

  He wanted to grab them all by their shoulders and shake them like a baby, which was a bad thing to do, apparently.

  Instead, he leaned forward and stroked his chin in what he hoped was a very captain-like manner.

  “Firing solutions, Hannarca. On the idea that there is an entity somewhere inside that storm.”

  She grinned like a cat and started tapping and swiping.

  Normally, only morons would’ve thought to shoot a storm.

  But, that only applied to normal storms.

  This one was probably not.

  Thus, he should be okay when it came time for his review.

  If not?

  He shrugged.

  It didn’t matter.

  Worst thing ranger command would do was ban him from skyship duty.

  Back to the archives.

  Back to his carefree and safe-ish life.

  A win for him no matter the outcome.

  “Snarktessa, try the ambassador again. Relay the new information. That should give him points with the Japanese. Stress the importance to his entire team’s safety that the evacuation window is closing.”

  Damn ass didn’t want to leave.

  Something about showing solidarity to build rapport and a bunch of nonsense gibberish.

  What he wanted was for the ambassador and his team to get on board so that they could go fly away from the probably soul-sucking storm.

  “After you do that, contact home base again and tell them we think that there’s something weird about this storm.”

  What he really wanted to do was cry for Rayna like she was his mommy.

  A mommy that could beat up every bully and their dads in the world.

  “Potiguayan—”

  “I’ve got my ladies and gentlemen on combat alert. We’re ready to fight in case something gets on board.”

  He didn’t like the other captain’s smug grin.

  Sure, Potiguayan outranked him, since he was only an acting captain and of a skyship at that, but that was no reason for the bigger man to look down on him like he was one of the callow youths manning the bridge stations.

  “Thank you. Any, uh, concerns I need to hear.”

  “Just stick to the protocols for now. Might want to prep everyone for pressurized activities.” Potiguayan actually winked.

  What the fuck does that even mean?

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Captain Mandrill, I have a suggestion,” Picardia said.

  His second-in-command had him staring intently at the holographic projection in the center of the bridge.

  She had the unfortunate habit of crossing and uncrossing her arms underneath her chest.

  And getting hit with a creepy perv infraction was one of the ways that he didn’t want to get booted out of the captain’s chair.

  “Yes, Number Two.”

  He watched the vice captain out of the corner of his eye lean forward.

  “Send drones. The first thing we need to do is get eyes inside. We can’t determine the nature of the threat without determining if there is one in the first place.”

  “Drones are ready,” Hannarca chimed in.

  Sometimes he felt like they were all working at a different speed and on a different plane of existence from him.

  It was almost as embarrassing as the event that led to his ranger name.

  He remembered it like it had just happened eight years ago.

  A bad sunburn.

  Pale, pasty flesh that failed miserably in the hot summer sun.

  He shouldn’t have listened to his friends.

  Nude tanning?

  Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

  If only his vanity at being at his peak physical shape hadn’t overridden good sense.

  Then the pantsing incident that Monday back at junior rangers.

  Jessica… that thorn in his side.

  A slap heard round the training field.

  A senior ranger, one of the instructors, taking note. Remembering his bright red buttocks.

  His ranger name conceived in that moment.

  “Launch drones.”

  Order given, he let the crew handle the details.

  That was the key to command.

  It didn’t hurt that they knew their jobs way better than him anyways.

  What else did he need to delegate?

  Ah… yeah.

  He pressed a button on his console.

  “This is your captain speaking. We are now on Yellow Alert.”

  They’d know what to do.

  Helmets on and combat suits for everyone.

  Those were important in case the skyship lost pressurization at high altitude.

  Self-contained environments for safe human existence couldn’t be overlooked, after all.

  He watched silently, leaning toward the displays. Both the holographic projection and the vid screens.

  The itch to fill the silence with inane commentary nearly maddened him.

  Why did the dumb kids look so excited?

  At least the veteran, Potiguayan, looked properly concerned, even if the big man gave off the same excited vibes as the others.

  Dark clouds.

  Flashes of lightning.

  Thunder cracks.

  Rainfall that resembled the ocean depths with how thick it was.

  Dozens of drones spread out to cover many kilometers of three dimensional space in the typhoon larger than the country.

  Probably?

  Geography wasn’t his strong suit.

  Potiguayan chuckled.

  “It’s raining sideways.”

  Yes.

  It was.

  How else would it be with winds that strong?

  Mandrill started to worry.

  He had figured the vet was a steady rock he could rely on to cover for him when the soup got shitty.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Hannarca maintained commentary with precise language and clipped tones, which he appreciated.

  The middle of a potential combat situation wasn’t the time for flowery language and metaphors, unless one had to communicate only in metaphor, which, upon reflection might’ve been preferable to actual fighting.

  Those had their places, but only in the history books.

  “Nothing on visual.”

  The winds forced the drones to move fast and in a straight line.

  “Multi-spectrum… nothing unnatural. Energy surges are off the charts, but within projections based on typhoon size. Captain, due to wind speeds I conclude that mage eyes and the like will be ineffective. Scrying spells will provide no material improvement over the drones, further more I recommend you refrain from sending our fliers to sortie.”

  “Noted.”

  Like he’d send those guys out in that!

  They’d probably want to because they were crazy, but he had to think about the poor drakes and wyverns, also crazy, but they didn’t know better like a human should’ve.

  “Approaching the eye wall.”

  The drones winked out like flickering candles in the typhoon-force winds.

  Silence reined for a long minute.

  He thought he could hear the tactical officer muttering expletives as she tapped and swiped on her console.

  He didn’t prod.

  The youths needed their time.

  “Apologies, captain. I can’t determine what went wrong.”

  “No sudden power surges, Hannarca?” Picardia said.

  The vice captain was a calming presence, as usual.

  Mandrill was just a tad bit jealous that a girl, nay, a young woman barely out of her teens projected more of a skyship captain mien than he.

  “Negative. They were fine one moment and just gone the next.”

  “Did they all go down at the same time? It looked like that to me.” He had an idea.

  “No. The algorithm says they went down within microseconds of each other,” Hannarca said.

  “Can you map it out?” Picardia said.

  Damn it!

  A good idea for once and she beat him to it.

  “Good thinking, Number Two!” He nodded in a wise captain-like way.

  She inclined her head to him in what he thought, hoped, was respect.

  Double damn.

  He was a petty sort sometimes and he was almost sure that she hated when he called her that.

  At least, at first.

  Maybe someone else had let her know what he actually meant by it.

  He fondly remembered the first few weeks when her eyes tightened and her smile froze.

  Oh well… he figured once they completed their patrol command would have a replacement captain for him.

  Just had to survive a few more stops.

  Southeast Asia, then across the Pacific to South America, then up to Southern California. Where his precious archives awaited.

  “Find where it started and we might find the source.”

  Silence returned.

  Rather tense from his perspective.

  As such things tended to be when one sat on the precipice of battle.

  Meanwhile, the black storm that stretched across the entire horizon continued its advance.

  Snarktessa caught his eye.

  “Sir. The ambassador has reiterated his resolve to stand with our hosts in their time of need. Roughly, his exact words. He was insistent I repeat them. He also strongly suggests that we stay close in case they need our help.”

  He thanked the communications officer.

  Truthfully, he disagreed with the ambassador.

  He knew the Japanese capabilities.

  They could handle their own emergency operations just fine without him… er… the Seraynaty.

  “Helm, I want you to plot a course avoiding that typhoon while keeping us close to Tokyo.”

  Blindo shot him a confused look.

  Mandrill returned with a mental shrug.

  Sure, Blindo was technically a pilot, but he wanted to do the captain thing properly, which meant using the right terminology.

  If that conflicted with ranger stuff, then command could always punish him. Preferably by sending him home.

  The thought made him smile.

  “Helm, amend that. Plot that course, but with an eye toward keeping good firing lines.”

  “To the typhoon, captain?”

  “Make it so.” He nodded wisely.

  “Acknowledged.”

  Honestly, it wasn’t a tough thing to keep good firing lines.

  The skyship had a lot of weapons. Most of which had huge firing arcs. They had missiles that could obviously fire at any target regardless of location. There were no blind spots.

  Wait! Are the shields on? No! Don’t ask them. I’ll look stupid. I just gotta remember that they know their jobs. Yeah… that’s how it works. He eyed Hannarca. She’s supposed to be a tactical genius. She’ll have the shields already up or ready to go.

  Just to be on the safe side he slickly tapped on his console to bring up the tactical interface and yes. Shields were set on auto. Ready to go up the instant the sensors detected incoming attack.

  Nice one, Hannarca!

  As if she could read his thoughts, she turned to him.

  Well… to the vice captain, but then to him, correcting the initial mistake.

  “It gave me this.”

  She put up a holographic projection, replacing the totality of the typhoon in favor of a specific section.

  “These are the drones the instant before we lost contact.”

  Dozens of bright lights twinkled like tiny stars.

  “This is the order in which they vanished. Remember, we’re dealing with fractions of a second.”

  Mandrill suppressed a cowardly groan.

  It appeared to his non-expert eyes that the drones definitely vanished in order based on where they were.

  “Specifically, if this is enemy action, then the source originated from this area.”

  She highlighted said location in the projection.

  “In the ocean?”

  Great… probably some kind of sea monster. Did that kraken thing that puppeted people create its own storms?

  “Possibly, captain, but it’s a large target area.”

  “Anything on what actually killed our drones?”

  “Nothing yet, but the analysis is still running.”

  “Has the time to landfall changed?”

  He got a hunch. A roiling ball of spikes in his gut, as the saying went.

  Hannarca scowled as she checked on her console.

  The look of surprise she quickly mastered as she glanced back at him was a little hurtful.

  It wasn’t like he was purposefully incompetent in a selfish gambit to get back to his precious archives.

  He took being acting captain seriously.

  The last thing he wanted to do was cost the crew.

  “The typhoon has increased speed. Projected time to landfall has moved up approximately twenty minutes.”

  “Comms, relay that information to the JSDF. And update home base.”

  If they didn’t pick it up already.

  They should’ve have.

  They had Omninet access to the satellite information.

  He waited for Snarktessa to finish before bothering her again.

  “Can you broadcast message to that?” He gestured toward the typhoon. “Or more specifically to the location Snarktessa highlighted?”

  “Sorry, sir. Not without putting another drone in there.”

  He did some mental math regarding their drone inventory.

  “Alright. Broadcast as far as you can and record it for the next batch of drones we’ll send out.”

  Damn it! I don’t want to do this. This is the opposite of a quiet, therefore, safe and carefree life. Now, some outworld invaders or eldritch abomination will know of me. Oh God! This better not be that Deep Azure thing!

  What a way to force a clenching of his the piss and butt holes.

  “Greetings. This is the captain of the R.S. Seraynaty. I address the thinking being or thinking beings, if there are any, within the typhoon. Your current course will take you straight through a populated area. It is a violation of Japanese territory and may be considered an act of war. Please disperse the typhoon or change its course back to the Pacific and away from any inhabited lands. Failure to comply may result in defensive action from us.”

  He nodded to Snarktessa.

  “Got it, captain. Recorded and sent to the hanger with your orders.”

  “Launch the drones as soon as they’re ready.” He caught Potiguayan’s eyes. “You’re the combat vet here. Thoughts?”

  The big man shrugged.

  “Haven’t seen anything like this. The scale of it is insane. Which, tells me it’s enemy action. Probably not the fishmen. Or anything else we’ve got on file. So, not that helpful. Whatever it is, we just need to stick to protocol.”

  “Right, thank you for that insight.”

  Don’t do anything stupid. I hear you loud and clear.

  “Captain, if I may make a suggestion?” Picardia.

  “Go ahead, Number Two.”

  Her eye didn’t even twitch.

  She handed him her sleek tablet.

  “Those red lines are for the typhoon.”

  Three of them. Each progressively closer to land.

  “It’s so large and powerful that it doesn’t need to reach land to potentially cause a lot of damage. The water funneled up into the bay will create a storm surge of… well… you can see the projections.”

  “The Japanese don’t seem that worried. I’m assuming they’ve got Skills and magic ready to go. Or had them ready once this storm formed out of nowhere.”

  “Typhoon Kamikaze, captain,” Snarktessa chimed in. “They just named it. It means—”

  “Divine Wind. After the typhoon that wrecked the Mongol fleet in ancient times, saving Japan from invasion. Or something like that.”

  Being an archivist meant a lot of time in libraries and reading. Only some of which was work related.

  A bit ominous.

  Had he been in charge he would’ve called it Typhoon Josh or Typhoon Mary.

  Something less threatening.

  “Noted, Snarktessa, thanks. Please continue, Number Two.”

  “Not much else to say, captain. Other than that we need to find an actual target to hit before it crosses the last line. Or we can be morons and just fire at it in a broad sense. It’s not like we’d miss in that case. It’s bigger than countries, especially when you account for volume. I suggest the eye might be a good place to start.”

  He didn’t hesitate.

  Picardia was sharp.

  Top of her class according to her file.

  And he had asked around. Talked to teachers and trainers for each one of the Seraynaty’s crew. Even spent a few hours being grilled by the original captain.

  To summarize, the captain had given him a highly detailed report on the crew.

  Strengths, weaknesses, joys, fears, hopes, dreams and favorite foods and drinks when they were happy and sad.

  Thus, his decision to rely on delegation.

  “I’ll leave the battle plan to you.”

  “Thank you, captain.” Picardia straightened in her chair. “Helm, take us up to these coordinates and follow this patrol pattern. Maintain firing angle on the eye with our main gun.”

  Mandrill kept the smug grin to himself.

  By all his metrics that was quite a job well done.

  Captain Ealal, Teneb, skin the color of darkest night, ranmerbalaen singer of the venerable Akuthan.

  Akuthan, half-living ranmerbalaen ship.

  Together they were as close to one being as possible.

  Near one hundred percent symbiosis.

  Ealal lay in the biomechanical command pod.

  The Akuthan’s soothing song pulsed through the fluid surrounding her in a warm embrace that she had always thought what it must’ve been like for her when she was but a baby in her mother centuries ago.

  She listened with her ears. She listened with the Akuthan’s.

  Their crew spoke sparingly, relaying information back and forth.

  All according to protocol.

  In truth, they were superfluous. Only necessary for emergencies. For the unlikely event that she and the Akuthan were not enough.

  His amusement at the thought clicked through their link.

  So few to crew a ranmerbalaen ship when it took hundreds for a non-living ship of similar size.

  They could do it with just the two of them.

  Outside of the bridge crew there were less than a hundred, but they were just marines, a small diplomatic team and the rest needed to take care of them all.

  She sent chiding thoughts, but without true rancor for she shared the Akuthan’s sentiments.

  All were necessary in their own ways, whether great or small and thus deserved respect for their efforts toward their people’s cause.

  They sent out a pulse of sound upward.

  Sonar.

  She saw it in her mind’s eye as the Akuthan saw it.

  Blackness.

  Sound returning, changed by what it had struck.

  Particles in the ocean.

  Tiny lifeforms.

  The larger things like fish and sea mammals had long fled the Benedine’s powerful storm.

  Microscopic pollution.

  It took her a moment to recall information from the distant past of her homeworld.

  The primitives of this Terminus World had yet to fix their plastic mistake.

  “— dangerous levels of contamination—”

  “Record and move on.”

  Adjutant Singer Pavoron’s sound wavered.

  Their young adjutant’s first truly potentially dangerous Quest had a predictable effect on his composure.

  They sent a soothing pulse.

  The rest was up to him.

  Sink or swim.

  Fly or fall.

  They all had to face their challenges.

  Pulses pinged back.

  They remained silent to let their crew work.

  Despite their thoughts on the matter, they knew the importance of keeping a competent crew. Young calves couldn’t spend their entire lives underneath the sheltering shields of the pod’s wings.

  “Detecting high speed movement.”

  “Straight line track. Triangulating source.”

  “Unknown metal sound.”

  “Located possible source. Probability seventy-three percent. Calculating course projections.”

  Ealal and the Akuthan were pleased to note that the information pushed into the display orb in the middle of the bridge chamber was in line with what they had already done in their combined head.

  He nudged her with images of a proper praise for the crew.

  She pushed back, but not seriously, she could admit that she was sparse with her praise.

  A rare difference of opinion between the two.

  He saw them as his calves long before they had ever proved themselves worthy of the honor.

  Centuries and hundreds of crew.

  Time and numbers had done nothing to harden that peculiar softness in his half-living soul.

  “Captain Ealal?”.

  “That sounded like a question, adjutant. What have we told you about that?”

  “Sorry, captain. We’ve determined that these are the enemy’s probes with a ninety-three percent accuracy probability. They are projected to converge on the storm’s center pillar.”

  She pretended to think for a moment.

  “What action do you suggest?”

  “Destroy them. If they breach the inner storm wall they may detect us.”

  “We concur.”

  They sent a different pulse of sound.

  More powerful, sharp like a blade.

  The sounds of destruction returned to them in quick succession like a rapid movement, a rising crescendo that suddenly fell into silence.

  Which wasn’t exactly correct.

  The Benedine’s storm with its howling winds, angry thunder and lighting was anything but quiet.

  “What next, adjutant?”

  “Captain, honored Akuthan, I believe that the battle has begun.”

  “Hmm, partially correct. We know, but they do not. They probe in the dark, searching for a threat that they can only feel as of yet. They are a blind sea cow circling on the surface unaware that a hungry spear whale lurks in the dark water. It sounds unfair, doesn’t it?”

  “There is no place for fairness in battle, captain. You taught me that.”

  “Indeed, however the Akuthan is on a new world, facing a new people. That always brings out the softness in his soul. Or rather, it brings out the softness, to be accurate. And I must concur.”

  “But, captain, we may have information on the enemy skyship’s capabilities, but that information is suspect.”

  “True, so instead of a rushing charge with our nose spear, let’s nip at their fins like an annoying nibbler fish.”

  “Your crew is ready!”

  The crew’s disparate songs trilled through the bridge chamber with unrestrained excitement.

  “Re-calibrate, our ca— crew. We do not begin our battle before the Benedine and the secret daggers have begun theirs.”

  Thus said, she and the Akuthan flapped their massive broad wings and used their inherent magic to lift their sleek, massive bulk out of the deep water and into the raging darkness of the storm.