Captain Esteban Pérez exhaled slowly, his breath blooming into fog before vanishing into the night.

  His forces hung above the clouds, lashed by ropes to the galleon’s hull, silent and waiting. Silence was not discipline. It was enforcement. One Arawinaya auxiliary had already learned that.

  Three great sky galleons were his. Their capture had inspired fear and broken rivals. He should have used them then, driven straight at Deadwake and taken it whole.

  But certainty had eluded him.

  He had waited. The great ships had rotted where they lay, and replacing their planks had nearly ruined him.

  Below the cloud deck lay Thren’s Reach, guarded by his striped galleon and the Venture Exchange coalition clinging to Thren’s banner. Pérez knew they would come. He felt it in his bones. They would come at night.

  Thren had promised better ships and better politics, an engineer’s future and a coalition strong enough to brand any rival a rabid pirate. Pérez had no intention of standing alone when that vote came.

  He would win.

  The system had warned him plainly: ally with Thren and his young engineer, and he would die.

  Pérez exhaled, almost amused.

  Death warnings always meant he was close.

  Below, faint bells drifted up through the cloud layer.

  Pérez smiled.

  Around him, men tensed, eyes flicking toward him, waiting. He gave them nothing.

  Then came the cannons. One. Two. Then more, too many for a probing defense. The sound rolled upward, muffled by cloud and distance.

  Pérez’s smile widened.

  He let the moment stretch. Let the silence work on them. His men shifted, hands tightening on rigging and rails, hungry for motion but unwilling to break it.

  At last, he moved.

  Slowly, deliberately, he stepped to the crate and drew out a flare. He mounted the railing and paused, holding it high.

  The night was impossibly calm. Stars scattered across the dark. He filled his lungs once, savoring it.

  Then he lit the flare.

  Crimson fire tore through the sky. A thousand lights answered, blooming red across the darkness. Pérez released the spent flare and watched it fall.

  The whoop that rose from his men was Arawinaya in origin, twisted into something harder. Ropes were cut.

  War canoes dropped from the clouds, followed by a handful of brigantines, plunging toward the battle below.

  Pérez rode the descent with them.

  Flares tumbled ahead of his ships, trailing burning cloth. The clouds ignited in patches of red and gold, hellfire stitched through vapor. His forces punched through the cloud deck and into the fight.

  Below, the defending galleon reeled. Stripped and scarred, it listed under attack, harried from above and below as canoes swarmed its rigging. Its hull still held. It would die slowly.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The sky was crowded with sails. Too many. It was the Venture Exchange coalition, drawn from every corner of Deadwake and reinforced by Arawinaya auxiliaries.

  He had waited decades for a sky this full, the largest since Nueva Trujillo.

  He signaled. Lanterns flashed. His brigantines peeled outward, curving wide to cut off retreat.

  Below, movement broke. Arawinaya auxiliaries scattered first, canoes shearing away as the scale of Pérez’s fleet became impossible to ignore.

  Pérez watched without comment.

  His mixed crews dove in behind them. Clay pots arced through the air, bursting into sheets of flame across wicker hulls and canvas alike. Smoke rolled upward.

  Pérez inhaled deeply.

  The battle had found its shape. With it, the votes that would follow.

  “Onward,” Pérez roared, pointing toward a harried brigantine caught in the center of the formation. His ship dove deeper into the melee. When it passed over the target, Pérez jumped.

  He hit the deck hard, boots skidding on blood slick planks.

  A man rushed him with a boarding pike.

  Men always rushed when they were afraid.

  Pérez shot him through the throat and kept moving.

  This was how it always began.

  A blade rang off his shoulder plate. He turned with it and drove his hook into the man’s chest, felt ribs give.

  Armor failed where confidence failed first.

  The man fell without a sound.

  A guard cowered behind a barrel, the edge of his head betraying him.

  Fear made men smaller. Bullets did not.

  Pérez fired and didn’t look back.

  A woman stood frozen by the bulkhead, fine boots, clean hands, no weapon.

  Merchants were his favorite prey. They never understood when the war had already started.

  Pérez raised his pistol.

  This was how it always ended.

  Green system notifications flared at the edges of his vision. Pérez flicked them aside without looking.

  Hauled back onto his deck, Pérez ordered the ship to climb.

  It rose above the fray, the noise falling away as altitude returned perspective.

  From there, he surveyed the battle and nodded once.

  Not bad, considering the numbers.

  Below, his own Crimson Wake galleon guarding Thren’s Reach was slipping downward, listing as it bled altitude and men. It was leaving the battlespace, slow and inevitable.

  Ahead of Thren’s Reach, the enemy tried to gather itself. Lanterns flashed, tighten formation, disengage, rise to meet him.

  Only a third obeyed.

  Another third drifted without purpose, climbing too slowly or turning too wide.

  The rest every war canoe among them, broke away entirely, scattering into the dark.

  Pérez watched them go without comment. The center had failed. Everything else followed.

  He shouted orders, his gathered canoes and brigantines turning to match.

  He smiled as enemy flags came into view. It was the merchants turning to face him. Perfect.

  His canoes rose above his brigantines.

  His larger ships turned broadside toward the approaching formation, still larger than his own, but poorly escorted.

  His canoes rained fiery pots from above and cut sails rigging. Many exploded from the grapeshot his own forces fired.

  The enemy charge was ragged and uncoordinated, their own numbers crashing hulls in the dark. Two ships folded from friendly impact alone.

  Pérez spotted a wounded Venture Exchange galeota, the third flagship, listing and falling out of line.

  He pointed.

  “Capture her,” Pérez roared.

  His craft surged forward. Ropes dropped.

  They met heavy resistance.

  Pérez hit the deck first.

  A defender lunged at him, desperate and late.

  Speed decided fights long before strength did.

  Pérez shot the man through the chest and stepped past him.

  His men followed hard behind him.

  The defenders rallied then, pressed together, firing low and fast.

  Courage always returned once blood was shared.

  Two of Pérez’s men went down before the line broke.

  The last defenders faltered, weapons half-raised, eyes already searching for escape.

  Battles ended the moment belief ran out.

  Pérez put them down and stood alone on the deck.

  The blunderbuss went off behind him with a savage WHUMP.

  The force slammed Pérez forward, spun him, and threw him onto his back. Pain tore through his spine, white and absolute.

  He lay staring up at scarlet clouds, flares burning holes through the night. His body would not answer him.

  A woman stood over him.

  She was shaking. Crying. Dressed for commerce, not war—a banker’s coat, a bright yellow headscarf knocked askew. The blunderbuss trembled in her hands.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  She had forgotten to reload.

  The blunderbuss fell from her fingers. She collapsed to her knees, sobbing.

  Pérez tried to reach for the pistol at his leg. His body refused. Heat spread beneath him, slick and warm against the deck.

  So this was it.

  The woman crawled toward him, tears streaking her face. Her hands found the holster. She drew the pistol free.

  She had beautiful brown eyes.

  She raised the muzzle to his forehead. Her hands shook so badly the barrel skipped across his skin.

  “I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

  Pérez coughed, wet and ragged.

  The pattern failed him at last.

  “Don’t miss,” he said. “I would kill you.”

  The flash came.

  Then black.