The Indian Ocean – Night
The Upepo wa Pili cut through the black water like a obsidian blade.
Under the cold light of a full moon, the smuggled dhow looked less like a fishing boat and more like a phantom. Upepo stood balanced on the boom of the mast, his metal staff raised high. He wasn't just controlling the wind; he was the engine. He caught the erratic ocean breeze, compressed it into a jet stream, and fed it directly into the massive triangular lateen sail.
The teak hull groaned under the strain, pushing speeds no dhow was ever built to handle.
"Faster!" Upepo laughed, the salt spray soaking his blue armor and spiking his hair. "We are flying! I love the ocean!"
Chacha sat amidships, clutching the gunwale with a grip that threatened to splinter the wood. The giant warrior, who could wrestle a Rhino-Beast and hold back an army, was currently a pale shade of green.
"We are not flying," Chacha gagged, staring fixedly at the horizon to keep his stomach down. "We are bouncing. Why is the ground wet? I hate wet ground. Give me a mountain any day."
Amani stood at the prow, staring into the darkness ahead. The ocean here felt heavy. To his Gravity-tuned senses, the water was a chaotic mess of shifting mass. The tides pulled one way, the currents another. It was disorienting.
"Bahari," Amani called out to the boy at the helm. "How far?"
Bahari leaned on the tiller, his eyes scanning the star-line with the intensity of a veteran captain. He looked small next to the Storm Chasers, but on the water, he was the master.
"We are crossing the continental shelf now," Bahari said, his voice tight with tension. "The water gets shallow. The Rufiji Delta is the mouth of the beast. We have to hit the main channel perfectly. If we miss by ten degrees, we run aground on the sandbars and the tide will crush us."
Sia called down from the crow's nest, where she had lashed herself to the mast.
"Fog bank ahead!" she warned, lowering her amber goggles. "It's thick. Unnatural. It's blocking the thermal readings."
"That's not weather," Bahari said grimly. "That's the Breath of the Admiral. He keeps the Delta shrouded so the satellites can't see his fleet."
They sailed into the wall of white mist.
The world vanished. The moon disappeared. The sound of the open ocean—the crashing waves and the wind—faded instantly, replaced by the eerie, dripping silence of the swamp.
The Ironwood Maze
The water changed color. It went from the clean, deep blue of the ocean to a thick, oily brown. The smell of salt was replaced by the stench of rot, sulfur, and stagnant mud.
They were in the Delta.
It was a labyrinth of twisted rivers, islands, and sandbars. On either side of the narrow channel, massive Mangrove Trees rose from the mud on their stilt-like roots.
But these weren't normal trees.
"Look at the roots," Imani whispered, leaning over the side with her glowing staff to light the way.
The roots were covered in black barnacles and patches of rust. Some of the trees had metal pipes growing out of them, fusing with the bark like veins. The leaves overhead were jagged sheets of tin that clattered softly in the breeze.
"The virus," Imani said, horrified. "It's terraforming the biology. These are Ironwood Mangroves. They are half-plant, half-machine. They are filtering the salt out of the water to create fuel."
The boat drifted silently through the narrow channels. The canopy of iron branches blocked out the sky, creating a tunnel of shadows.
CLANK… DRIP… CLANK.
Sounds echoed from the swamp. Mechanical chittering. The splash of heavy things moving in the mud. The grinding of gears deep underwater.
"Eyes up," Amani whispered. "We are not alone."
Sia had her compound bow drawn, a specialized piercing arrow nocked. She scanned the treeline with her golden vision.
"Heat signatures everywhere," Sia hissed. "But they are cold. Cold blood. Cold metal. The mud is alive."
Suddenly, the boat shuddered violently. Something had brushed against the keel.
"Sandbar?" Upepo asked, lowering his staff, looking nervous.
"No," Bahari said, his face draining of color. "Too deep for sandbars. That was a Scraper."
"A what?" Chacha asked, raising his shield.
"A mine," Bahari whispered. "The Admiral mined the channels. But they aren't explosives. They are magnetic leeches."
THUMP.
Something latched onto the side of the hull. Then another. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
Small, crab-like machines were crawling up the side of the dhow. They glowed with a sickly green light. They had diamond-tipped drills for mouths.
"Get them off!" Bahari yelled, abandoning the tiller to grab a gaffing hook. "They will bore holes in the hull and sink us!"
The Battle of the Leeches
"Leeches!" Chacha roared, forgetting his seasickness in the face of a fight.
He grabbed his Obsidian Shield and smashed the first crab as it crested the rail.
CRUNCH.
The machine shattered, spilling green oil onto the teak deck.
"They're fast!" Sia yelled, firing point-blank. Her arrows pinned the crabs to the wood, but more were swarming up the ropes, their mechanical legs ticking against the hull.
"Don't let them touch the sail!" Upepo shouted. He spun his staff, creating a localized wind blast that blew three crabs back into the water.
Imani ran to the railing. She saw hundreds of them swarming up from the muddy water like a carpet of green eyes.
"There are too many!" Imani cried, smashing one with her staff. "We can't hit them all! They're swarming the rudder!"
Amani looked at the water. It was thick, salty, and conductive.
"Upepo!" Amani commanded. "Lightning! Hit the water!"
"Are you crazy?" Upepo yelled. "We're in the water! We'll fry!"
"The hull is wood!" Amani shouted back, calculating the physics. "Teak is an insulator! The crabs are metal! Hit the water!"
Upepo didn't hesitate. He pointed his staff at the river.
"RADI!" (Lightning!)
A bolt of blue electricity arc from his staff into the black water.
ZZZZZAAAAAAP.
The river boiled. The electricity traveled through the salt water, seeking the path of least resistance—the metal bodies of the Scrapers.
The leeches on the hull seized up, sparked violently, and fell off, splashing back into the river. The swarm underwater stopped moving, short-circuited en masse.
Silence returned to the swamp, save for the sizzling of fried circuits.
"Good thinking, Anchor," Chacha grunted, kicking a dead leech overboard.
"We have to keep moving," Amani said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "That noise will attract bigger things."
The Graveyard of Ships
They sailed deeper into the Delta for another hour. The channel widened. The fog began to lift slightly, revealing the true scale of the Admiral's operation.
And then, they saw it.
Bahari steered the boat around a sharp bend, and the team gasped.
They had entered a massive lagoon, hidden deep within the mangroves. It was a Graveyard of Ships.
But the graves were open.
Rising from the mud were the rusted skeletons of ships from a dozen different eras. There were wooden Arab dhows rotting alongside steam-powered gunboats from the First World War. There were modern cargo tankers and rusting submarines.
They were being raised.
Massive cranes, built from mangrove wood and scavenged iron, were hoisting the ships out of the muck.
And crawling over them like ants were thousands of Drones and Drowned Sailors. They were welding. They were hammering. They were patching the holes in the hulls with fresh steel plates.
"He's not building a fleet," Chacha whispered, staring at a massive, rusted destroyer towering over them. "He is resurrecting one."
"The Old Iron," Bahari said, pointing to a German cruiser from 1914, its guns now glowing with green energy. "The Königsberg. My grandfather told stories of that ship. The British sank it in this river a hundred years ago. Now… it sails again."
The Leviathan
In the center of the lagoon, dominating the fleet like a mountain, was the flagship.
It wasn't a ship. It was a floating fortress.
The Leviathan.
It was built on the hull of a massive super-tanker, but it had been modified into a monstrosity. Towers of black iron rose from the deck, housing factories that belched green smoke into the sky. Its sides were armored with the shells of giant sea turtles and scavenged iron plates.
And hanging from the bow, like a grotesque figurehead, was a massive Dredging Claw, dripping with mud.
"That's him," Bahari whispered, shaking. "That's the Admiral's ship."
"It's huge," Upepo gulped. "It's bigger than the Colossus."
"No," Amani corrected. "The Colossus was a tank. This… this is a Carrier. Look at the deck."
On the flat deck of the Leviathan, strange flying machines were parked. They looked like gargoyles made of canvas and iron—Ornithopters.
"If he launches those," Sia said, "he can bomb the coast from the air."
The Guardian of the Lagoon
"We need to get closer," Amani said. "We need to board that ship and find the core before it launches."
Bahari steered the dhow toward the shadow of a rotting hulk to hide their approach.
But the water beneath them began to ripple.
Not small ripples. Massive, rolling waves that rocked the boat.
"Tide change?" Chacha asked, raising his shield.
"No," Bahari whispered, his eyes wide. "There is no tide in the lagoon."
A massive shape passed under the boat. It was so large it blocked out the bioluminescence in the water.
ROAR.
The water erupted fifty yards ahead of them.
Rising from the depths was the Guardian.
It was a Crocodile. But it was the size of a submarine.
It was Gustav the Iron-Scale.
Its body was covered in thick, riveted armor plates scavenged from tank treads. Its eyes were high-powered searchlights. Its jaws were hydraulic crushers capable of snapping a destroyer in half.
It roared, a sound of grinding metal and primal fury that shook the trees.
"It smells us!" Sia shouted. "It's locking on!"
The massive crocodile turned. Its armored tail thrashed, sending a tsunami of muddy water toward the small dhow.
"Hold on!" Bahari screamed, turning the tiller hard to face the wave.
The wave hit them. The Upepo wa Pili was tossed into the air like a toy.
They crashed down, taking on water.
"We're sinking!" Imani cried. "The hull is cracked!"
The Iron Crocodile opened its jaws. A green light began to build in its throat—a plasma breath weapon fueled by the polluted water.
"It's going to vaporize us!" Upepo yelled.
Amani looked at the massive beast. He looked at the water. He looked at the rusted ships hanging from the cranes above them.
He saw a massive, rusted engine block hanging from a crane chain directly above the beast.
"Chacha!" Amani shouted. "The crane! The chain!"
Chacha looked up. "I see it!"
"Sia! Cut the chain!" Amani ordered. "Chacha, guide it!"
Sia drew an explosive arrow. She aimed at the rusted link holding the ten-ton engine block. The boat was rocking violently, but her aim was true.
Thwip.
BOOM.
The chain snapped. The massive engine block fell.
But the Crocodile was moving too fast. It would miss by feet.
"AMANI!" Chacha yelled.
Amani clapped his hands. He poured every ounce of his remaining mana into the spell.
"Gravity Well: Magnet!"
He didn't pull the engine down. He magnetized the Crocodile's head.
The falling iron engine block swerved in mid-air, pulled by the intense magnetic field Amani had placed on the beast.
CRASH.
The engine block slammed into the Crocodile's skull with the force of a meteor.
The beast shrieked—a sound of tearing metal and crushed bone. The impact drove its head underwater. It thrashed, confused and stunned, sinking back into the mud to recover.
The Boarding Party
"Now!" Bahari yelled, spitting water. "While it's stunned!"
He steered the sinking dhow toward the massive anchor chains of the Leviathan.
"We have to abandon ship," Amani said. "We can't fight that thing in the water."
The dhow slammed against the massive, rusted hull of the flagship.
"Climb!" Chacha ordered.
One by one, the Storm Chasers jumped from the boat onto the giant anchor chains of the Leviathan. The links were as big as people, covered in slime and oil.
They climbed up the slick iron, leaving the safety of the water behind.
Below them, the Iron Crocodile resurfaced, snapping its jaws where their boat had been just seconds ago. It crushed the Upepo wa Pili into splinters and matchsticks.
"My boat!" Upepo cried, looking down as his namesake vanished. "I just named it!"
"Keep climbing!" Amani urged, pulling himself up. "Don't look down."
They pulled themselves up, hand over hand, muscles burning, until they reached the hawsehole—the opening for the anchor chain.
They scrambled through the opening and landed on the dark, oily lower deck of the Leviathan.
They were aboard.
They were surrounded by thousands of enemies, in the middle of a swamp, with no boat, and no way home.
Amani looked at his team. They were wet, shivering, and scared. But they were alive.
"Welcome to the Navy," Amani whispered.
Next stop: The Bridge of the Admiral.