Fleet Commander Davis stood proudly at the bridge of the ancient destroyer-class battleship. The main guns fired again. Flashes and smoke, and the ship vibrated under his feet. Such power, he thought, that cannons as mighty as these resulted in only the slightest recoil against this metal behemoth. His armored but less advanced warships in the fleet around him followed suit, and the world around thumped and pounded like the beat of an army of drums.

A kilometer in the distance, the ancient seaside town had been all but leveled, and rebels within surely decimated beyond hope. The empire wouldn't need the reinforcements after all, for all it took was the sacrifice of a single tank to kill the shore batteries.

"Ceasefire," said Commander Davis. His stone expression was chiseled into him, and his voice was as cold and jagged as his authority.

His officers, wearing similar black and grey navy uniforms, relayed the order, and the pounding cannon fire slowed to a halt. After a pause to drink in the victorious silence, he peered through his binoculars to survey the battered town.

The center drydock had caved in, but the sea-facing door was intact. He noticed movement. The hangar doors were opening--no--they were rumbling. Bulging. Something was pushing through!

The commander opened his mouth for the command, but no words came out. He could only stare at the hangar doors as they shattered off their hinges and splashed into the water, revealing the ugliest goddamn ship he had ever seen in his thirty years of seafaring.

It was the dilapidated fishing trawler they had left behind in favor of the actual ancient naval destroyer. Its deck had been cleared of trash and debris, the hull covered with patchwork metal, and the seawater pumped out to breathe life back into it.

On its deck, one of the masts had been snapped off and laid across the bow as a thick pipe. He looked for a white flag and saw none. There were no armaments, no guns, no cannons, no rifles.

The commander squinted his eyes to look for any movement on the decks. There was none. Were the rebels not on board? Perhaps this was the final gasp of those wily terrorists, to hide in the hold of that old ship like a can of sardines, so they could hope against hope to just slip on by.

His skin pulled taut and folded as he smirked. A new wrinkle had just been etched in. The imperial fleet had already taken a half-crescent formation to bombard the shore, and even now, he felt that his highly-trained captains had aimed the cannons at that rusty piece of junk, just itching to pull the trigger on his order.

But he would savor this victory.

He waited for the ship to ease closer. He wanted it to erupt in the brightest of flares so that the onboard photomancer would provide the greatest image he could deliver to her highness. Marianna would be most pleased upon his return, and the fleet commander's heart raced at the prospect of a promotion.

The ship eased closer.

Maybe she'll make him an aristocrat. No. Redrim was rumored to be among them. She would make him a noble, even. He would become no less than a duke for this. Maybe even a future viceroy. Viceroy Davis had a good ring to it.

The ship reached 500 hundred meters now. It was time. He raised his hand to give his most dramatic order and shouted, "What!?"

The broken mast on the ship wasn't a mast at all. It was a cannon! A flash of light erupted from it. Smoke bloomed in a ring. It had fired.

One of the nearby warships exploded in an upward waterfall of fire and debris and seawater, and its crew blossomed out with multi-colored smoke. Enchanted ammunition!

"Fire!" he ordered.

The world pounded as the huge metal cannons fired at the rusted fishing trawler. Fat artillery shells raced at the doomed ship, and in a blur, the shells froze midair, paused as if second-guessing classical physics, and spun around—darting off—and right back to his own fleet!

He and his crew grunted as several shells slammed against his ship. An alarm began to drone and whine, and he heard another popping splash beside him. His warships! Several had been hit fatally, and the crew jumping off deck.

The enemy ship didn’t stop. A light glimmered again at the broken mast cannon. It fired. Another warship erupted with sparks of lightning and mana fire.

The commander slammed his fist on the glass. At this rate, he would return only as a pyrrhic victor. "Destroy that ship, or I'll have you all executed for treason!"

An officer replied. "The-The fleet is reloading, sir."

He gritted his teeth. The enemy ship coasted closer. "Then reload faster."

The enemy ship fired. It missed this time, but the explosion erupted with water that sprayed across the decks. Whatever that gun was firing, it was dangerous.

At the shore, blinking flashes of light. The shore batteries! He looked through his binoculars and breathed a momentary sigh of relief. It was the mechanized assault force, come to help with the siege and to steal from his glory. The imperial tanks fired at the fishing trawler, but the tank shells erupted just beyond the hull of the enemy ship. A bluish honeycomb net blinked on its stern--protection magic! So the rebels were onboard, after all.

He might have a chance at his promotion, after all.

"Mobilize the transports," he commanded. "Have them board the ship."

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"Y-yessir!"

On either side of the narrow bay, several small troop transports idled in the water, but they heard the order, and each one turned toward the enemy ship. Each carried a squad of trained marines, more than enough to take a battleship, let alone a glorified rebel fishing boat.

Yet this wouldn't be enough. Losing even one warship was one too many, and he would not return to Queen Marianna without the glory and honor befitting a viceroy.

"Ready the marines," he ordered. He shoved the binoculars to his second-in-command, a middle-aged officer with a bushy mustache. "I'll be leading the assault."

"B-but commander," the officer said. "I must say that we don't know if--"

"Do not question me, Vice Admiral," he snapped. "Simply witness as I bring back a score of rebel prisoners, including the infamous Redrim."

"Understood," the officer said.

The fleet commander stomped away to suit up.

The enemy ship fired again. Another warship exploded. Water sprayed across the marines on the deck, and now the fleet commander was among them, bearing his enchanted plate armor and officer's pistol. He barked out the order, and the hurried onto the dangling transport.

Within moments, just as they had been drilled, the transport disconnected and dropped into the water, the engines blared through the water to drive them to their enemy, and four-dozen imperial marines itched for their moment of glory.

The fishing trawler fired again. Another warship cracked open like an egg and spilled out its contents into the water.

He would have no more chances. There were few warships left in his fleet, and if he didn't return victorious, he would be executed.

They eased close to the enemy ship, saw the sheer size of its bow—it was extended and almost as sharp as a knife--and they united with the other transports. The commander grunted with another errant wave rocking the ship, and he barked out the order.

The soldiers and marines threw over hooks to latch onto the enemy deck, and they began to climb.

The warships halted their fire. The fishing trawler had picked up speed, and it was now racing toward his fleet. As his men climbed and worked to form a breach in the hull, he could see the distance closing. Two hundred meters. One seventy-five.

The first group shed their gloves, and a sharp blue flame shot out from the tips of their forefingers.

The fishing ship fired again. Another warship lost.

One fifty meters.

By tracing shapes into the hull, they cut through like welders.

Another explosion. His last warship was gone. All that was left was his destroyer-class battleship.

One hundred meters. "Faster!" he ordered.

Other troops climbed up beside them, readied their weapons, and they breached the hull by kicking open a makeshift door.

Fifty meters. The fleet commander climbed up to join the assault, and just before he jumped into the darkness of this enemy ship, he heard the shouts of his men, and he looked back at his own ancient battleship, saw the face of it racing close--

"Impossible," he uttered.

--and the fishing trawler rammed its center mass, the knife's edge sharpness of the bow cutting right through. Metal groaned and twisted and sparked. Men screamed and shouted. Explosions rang out from within his battleship, his pride, his honor, his career, and the two halves of the mightiest seaborne vessel he had ever known scraped along the bow in a flurry of sparks, and he jumped into the breach just before they scraped past.

Behind, the remnant pieces of his once-mighty battleship began to sink.

Now he was the cornered fox.

He stood in a dark and rusted room with his boarding party, and he readied for combat. "Men," he bellowed. "We have no option, and we have no escape. We must capture this ship and its crew, or our lives are forfeit!"

They shouted back their acknowledgments, and together, they hurried down the empty halls of the vessel. They aimed their firearms as they turned corners, cleared rooms with military discipline, but they found nothing. Soon, they discovered that the ship was... a maze. A dark labyrinth. The halls and rooms and doorways seemingly endless, strangely getting dark enough to need torches, and somehow, against all incredible odds, they were lost. Several squads had gone missing, troops had vanished here and there, and with a quick headcount, the fleet commander had found only two dozen under his direct control.

"Here!" a marine shouted. His voice carried across the ship as an eery echo. "There is a large room at the end of this hall. It's surely the cargo hold."

The soldiers, stricken with worry and fear, formed themselves up and charged down the hall. Boots stomped across the metal floors, torches fluttered, guns clacked right as they burst through a large open room.

They stepped across with caution. The room seemed otherworldly large, much too big to fit inside the fishing trawler, and the darkness here so intense that one could not see a wall from the other. All that could be visible was the rusted metal floor lit by the torchlight as the group fanned out to search.

"A chest," someone said. "Commander. There's a chest here."

He looked. Beneath the torchlight, there was, sure enough, an old wooden chest. Odd, he thought, that a chest would be sitting so perfectly in the center of this room.

A soldier knelt down to open it.

"Wait," said the man beside him. "We don't know what's in it."

"It could be a map," said one.

"Or loot," continued another.

"Or a trap," the commander finished. He stomped over and kicked the chest away. It slid across the floor, echoing with the sound expected of wood sliding across metal.

Clang!

They froze. The sound came from the darkness.

Clang! Clang!

All at once, the two dozen soldiers aimed their rifles as a firing squad. Some knelt, some stood. All were ready and scared shitless.

Clang-clang-clang-clang.

A grey blur pounced out of the darkness and hit the floor--clangggg--before rolling around to bump against a man's boot.

It was a trash can. A lonely little trash can. Unmarked. Relatively new in appearance, and as a soldier picked it up to cradle it in his arms--"Aw, little guy. All here alone, are you?"--the commander spotted its rim.

It was red! It was Redrim! "Redrim!" he shouted.

A metal tentacle shot out from the trash can, piercing the soldier through the head. Blood sprayed. The others dropped their mouths agape in utter shock and fear, and the commander punched it away.

It clang-clang-clanged as it rolled across the floor, and the commander flung out his pistol and emptied it. Soon, his men followed suit, firing into Redrim's pathetic metal body with bullet after bullet. Redrim shook, punched by the force of each shot, and his trash can surface bent and tore.

Lifelessly, Redrim laid there on the floor as the final shot rang out. Silence returned. The soldiers were somehow out of breath.

"Did--did we get him?"

Clang!

Two dozen pairs of eyes widened. Stared at one another.

Clang!

It came from a different direction.

Clang-clang! Clang. Clang, clang, clang.

The clanging was all around them now! Another trash can hopped into the torchlight. Redrim again! But, "No. Impossible. It can't be." There was another Redrim. And another from the other side. They were surrounded by trash cans!

Each hopped closer. Slowly. Metal tentacles clicking out of their bodies, dragging behind them. A gun went off. Then another. Then all at once, as the soldiers backed into each other, surrounded by this trash can horde, they fired into the group as a final stand. A battle cry erupted into a crescendo. Torches fluttered out. Trash cans dove into the group. Blood sprayed. A man screamed for his mother. The commander's torch-lit eyes zipped around at every threat as he fired, again, again, a new target, another, and click.

Click.

His gun was empty.

The last torch fluttered out.

Click.

And with his scream, the darkness settled in.