Chapter Text
True to her name, the Courageous was the largest ship to dare the narrow, treacherous Jinbouchou Straits, delivering precious food and medicine to the Outposts protecting her fair nation. Plunging through the churning white waters between blades of jagged stone, the proud two-core freighter always cut a bright figure against the horizon, and her crew was no less impressive.
First Mate Arayama, dashing and devil-may-care, glinting with his arsenal of exotic weapons. Quartermaster Cai, tall and severe as a sandstone pillar, her eyes dancing with hidden humor. Doctor Doita, slim and refined in his sweeping white coat. And then there was the captain, a small, plump woman with the delicate finery and cutting eyes of a merchant, but the sturdy boots and strong hands of a mariner.
Make no mistake: Captain Botan Benimori belonged on the open seas.
She did not belong alone on the deck of an idling freighter, shrouded in thick fog, hunting boarders that might not even exist.
The trouble had started two nights before, as an unseasonable wall of cold fog rolled over their ship. Over the following hours, the beacons and islands their charts promised failed to appear. The next day brought them an unfamiliar expanse of jagged rocks and strange green coral, which they steered well clear of. Somehow, despite sailing this route a dozen times, they’d become lost in strange waters. Over time their focus and will drained away, text grew blurry and illegible, the sun grew colder and more distant, and strange voices called singsong nonsense from the fog.
One by one, Benimori’s faithful crew had fallen asleep at their stations and refused to wake. The automata went next, sagging in mid stride as the ship inexplicably fell to emergency power. Finally, as she hunkered belowdecks in the red emergency lights, poring over Doita’s medical texts for something that could help them, she’d heard a deep, resonant thud above, then another. Too heavy for footsteps – more like a clumsy longshoreman had fumbled a crate.
And so, she’d taken up her saber and revolver, and steeled herself to investigate.
“I’m not—I’m not scared of you!” Benimori cried. Her boots on the deck were deafening staccato clomps, instantly swallowed by the fog. Her jewelry clanked softly with each step, reminding her of the spurs on Papa’s cavalry uniform. The memory made her next words come out stronger. “C-come out and face me!”
A cold breath of wind stirred Benimori’s hair and she whirled, red coat flying wide, leveling her pistol on—what? Nothing but fog twisting in captivating patterns until, as though her vision were clearing from a head-rush, she could make out an automaton hulking in the gloom.
An old one. It was almost a meter taller than her, styled after the bulky diving suits they’d used in decades past, with a heavy brass helmet to protect the delicate sensors in its head. The whole thing was tattered, rusted, and waterlogged, and broken power cables dangled from its shoulders, swaying like snakes with the ship’s motion. Even if it were powered, the half-ton monster never could have crept up on her; it was as though it had congealed from the mist.
“What… are you?” Benimori asked, aim wavering.
Cold blue light shone out of the depths of the helmet, like a lighthouse beacon piercing kilometers of night sky. It speared through Benimori’s eyes and the sky filled her, and she flew on her own currents in a dizzying dance like a leaf painted in blood on burning rice paper. A silent voice rose in the darkness and echoed through her hollow skin, lifting her, filling her head with—
CRUNCH.
Benimori cried out as the light vanished. Something like pain flashed through her from head to toe, a hot, scouring slap, and then she sagged to catch her breath. Blood trickled from her nose onto the deck. She remembered her own name and the automaton at the same instant, jolting upright with her gun at the ready.
Instead of the specter, though, Benimori was faced with the most beautiful young man she’d ever seen. He was tall and wiry, his fine brown hair stuffed under a blue bandana, the sleeves of his white-and-blue striped shirt torn away to show off muscular arms. Three daggers were thrust casually through the sash about his waist, but they didn’t seem necessary; he stood in the ruins of the automaton, having obliterated it with a single flying kick. He lifted his boot carefully from a fractured deck plank and stepped towards Benimori, offering his hand with a warm smile. Those eyes…
“Careful, Seto!” an angry contralto called from the mist. “Don’t sink the damn ship yourself!”
Seto tossed a casual salute into the wall of fog and chirped, “Sorry, Captain! I’ll be more careful!”
That voice – no, that pronoun! Atashi? When Benimori realized that this magnificent specimen was a woman, she fell a little bit in love. She was usually pickier, but, just, wow.
“Akari Seto,” the vision said, turning back. “Pleased to meetcha!”
“Botan Benimori,” Benimori replied, shyly offering her hand. When Seto bowed and kissed her knuckles, she jolted upright and squeaked, “Welcome aboard!”
Maybe Seto was used to having that effect, because she chuckled and said, “You’re just caught up in a little phenomenon,” this, sounded out carefully as an unfamiliar word, “And our first mate’s gone out to fix it. We’ll have you sorted out in no time!”
“A… phenomenon? What do you mean?”
“Ahh, well, it’s real complicated,” Seto said bashfully, rubbing the back of her head. “Basically, you sailed into a haunted house? Uh, I’m pretty bad with all this stuff, so I’ll let the captain explain. I’m not much for the thinking part – I just punch what needs punching!”
Benimori’s heart was pounding. Tall, strong, kind, and dumb? No fair! She was perfect! “Very well, then. And thank you.”
“But we’d better watch out for entities. They just pop up out of nowhere, so—” Seto suddenly spun 270 degrees and extended her arm in a savage chop. A brass helmet flew from mechanical shoulders, and another automaton toppled backwards like a redwood. Her voice was harsher now, even with the smile in it. “—keep an eye out!”
“Al—alright!” Benimori said nervously, training her revolver out into the fog. She wasn’t sure what it could do to an automaton, but were these even machines? Her boot squelched in something, and she looked down to see that the remains of the first had become a pile of mushy seaweed. “Uh—”
“Yeah, that just happens. Don’t worry about it—and don’t worry about if you can hurt them! The captain’s watching us, so we can do anything!”
“In this fog?” Benimori protested, glancing over her shoulder.
“She can’t even see the fog!” Seto crowed, which seemed like a really weird thing to brag about. Her smile didn’t fade as she pointed. “Monster!”
Benimori spun and fired. The automaton had appeared just a meter shy of the barrel and, with an awful screech, became an explosion of blood and pulpy organs.
“I—it—!” Benimori sputtered in the sudden rain of carnage.
“Don’t let it get to you! It’s just—” CLANG! “—sea junk!”
Sure enough, instead of a gory ruin, a propeller lay tangled in more seaweed at her feet. Benimori decided to stop thinking and drew her saber. Two more automata ate bullets before she lost track of Seto in the mist and holstered her gun. Surprisingly, she handled her saber quite well, even as more beams of mind-stealing light speared through the gloom. She could barely make out Seto’s wake through the mist, but the din of her rampage was impossible to miss.
Just as Benimori really got going, the fog ripped away, taking the menacing figures with it. Even the detritus the monsters left behind was gone, though Seto’s dent in the deck was still there. The moon shone down from a deepening purple sky, and the deck throbbed as the ship’s cores came back to life.
Benimori turned to take the scene in and then almost screamed in shock. Another ship loomed over the Courageous, a great dark hull with a ramming prow and actual, old-fashioned masts towering against the moon in a grim forest of rigging. There was someone up there on the deck, but she only got the impression of a tricorne hat, a cloak, and an odd glint of blue before they turned away and vanished.
“Come on,” Seto called brightly. “The first mate might need help!” She sprinted to the opposite side of the deck, in the direction the fog had retreated, and called, “Hey, Nishina! How’d it go?”
Benimori followed and found a small motorized pinnace huddling in the Courageous’s shadow. A tall woman with long golden hair stood with her boot on the gunwale. Her outfit was like Seto’s, adding a light green jacket and at least three guns, including a rifle across her back. She looked up at Seto’s cry and Benimori caught her breath at the sight of her face. Was everyone on this ship ridiculously hot, or what?
She was cradling something against her belly in one hand. Its blue glow seemed to blaze right through her hand. A glass prosthetic?
“Should I bring the captain around?” Seto asked.
Benimori almost said, “I’m here” before remembering the hulking ship behind them. With a slight chill, she realized she wasn’t “the captain” in this situation and wondered if she could trust the woman who was.
In reply, Nishina raised the glowing bead above her head and crushed it with a loud squelch. “No need,” she said casually, and a last bit of fog wisped out as she brushed her hand on her pantleg. It looked like glass, but somehow moved like flesh. “I’ll head back to the Orpheus and come down with her, and we’ll sort the rest of this out.”
“My crew?” Benimori asked hopefully.
“Yeah,” Seto said with a kind smile. “Let’s go and get them. How many?”
Benimori’s heart did a somersault from the smile, but she kept it cool. “Just the four of us.”
“Three to rescue, then.” With a brisk nod, Seto crossed to the cabin door and set her hand on the latch.
“Will there, uh, be anything belowdecks?” Benimori hastened to follow, reloading her revolver.
“You never know,” Seto said, finally sobering. “Just stay close to me.”
“With pleasure,” Benimori replied, then froze, mortified.
“It’s the captain’s eye!” Seto clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Loosens you up, doesn’t it?”
“Sure…”
They descended together.
It was like walking into a freezer or crypt. The fog was gone above, but stubbornly clung to the planks down here in thick, oily strands. The air itself had changed, Benimori realized, and looking at the watch rotation posted on the wall, she could see that the text was still scrambled. Whatever they’d banished from the outside still had a grip on the Courageous…
“Definitely something spooky down here,” Seto said sagely. “The layout may change on us, but for now, where did you leave them?”
“Each in their cabins,” Benimori murmured, pointing down the hall to each door in turn. “Arayama, Cai, Doita. They’re unlocked. I’ll… I’ll get Arayama.” He was the smallest and lightest. She was pretty sure she could drag him.
“On the left?” Seto confirmed, indicating the door. “Gotcha. I should be able to bring the other two in one go. Ready?”
“Ready,” Benimori lied.
“And go!” Seto cried, lunging down the hall.
“Ack!” Benimori stumbled after, threw herself against Arayama’s door, fumbled the latch twice, and fell into the room. The cold air within hit like a brick wall, and she found herself casting about a network of low wooden walls in a cabin that was far too large. Arayama’s prized electric shoji lamp was duplicated a dozen times over throughout the maze; whenever she wasn’t looking directly at one, its warm golden light would flicker softly blue. A blast of wind fluttered her coat, twirling broad, flat ashes and red leaves around her.
Benimori almost called out, but realized there could be something else in the cabin with them.
In fact, she was certain of it.
“Close quarters,” she muttered, holstering her revolver. The saber had been a lot of fun on the deck, but suddenly the idea of relying on it was… Benimori shook her head and got moving. Now the clomps of her boots and jingle of her jewelry were terrifying. Shadows danced in the corners of her vision, and the softly flickering blue never went away, no matter where she turned her gaze. The experience was, in a completely straightforward sense, nightmarish.
As she advanced, there was no indication of where Arayama might be, or if he was even in the room at all. The shoji lamps were labeled, illegibly, and each had an arrow pointing straight into a wall. Fortunately, Benimori knew the trick to mazes: she picked a wall and followed it through every turn. It might take a while, but she couldn’t fail to reach her goal.
…provided the rules of geometry held steady, and she didn’t end up lost like the Courageous, wandering a frigid maze until her strength gave out…
Just as she had that thought, Benimori turned a corner and saw Arayama’s bed. He was splayed all over it with his hips in the air, still in full uniform, snoring thunderously. She’d left him neatly arranged, but he slept like a tumbleweed. When she sheathed her saber and checked him over, he was still warm, despite the icy air. His breath wasn’t even misting.
“Here goes,” Benimori said. She hefted him over her shoulder and started toddling back the way she came. He wasn’t as heavy as she’d feared, even with the kusari-gama, khopesh, and guando weighing him down. (He hadn’t been wearing them when she put him to bed – had he awakened and taken them up, or had the haunted house equipped him…?)
THUMP.
She started toddling faster.
THUMP THUMP THUD.
Now she was running. She barely felt Arayama’s weight as her boots pounded the deck with bone-rattling force. Arhythmic thunder raced behind her; not footsteps, unless it was the feet of a misshapen centipede or an army of giants or—
(Fleetingly, she remembered folding herself into a cupboard hoping her brothers would stop bothering her, only for them to spend the afternoon banging on the doors and yelling. Why think of that now?)
In the home stretch, the blows outpaced her and the walls crumpled into her path like foil with a sound like cackling thunder. She veered and overbalanced, ankle twisting, and then kept running on it. The ceiling dipped claustrophobically. The door to freedom lurched away. She screamed and poured on speed, leg flaming, as the whole maze crumpled around her and the floor burst into a jagged mountain range that she somehow threw herself over into the tilting door, and—
Benimori careened into the corridor, hit the opposite wall headfirst, staggered, and then scrambled up the stairs to burst onto the deck. She wanted to gently lay Arayama aside, but could only collapse into a gasping heap, sweltering in the cool evening. She could hear footsteps and soft voices, probably Seto’s crew, but didn’t bother to look up. For a time, she was her own universe of adrenalin and pain, slowly winding down.
After a few minutes, Benimori rose to her hands and knees and looked back to the door forlornly. Still no Seto. What horrors had her new friend encountered in the other cabins? Was she lost, along with Cai and Doita?
“There you are!” Seto cried behind her.
Benimori screamed and flailed and flopped onto her back. From that position, she could see Seto towering over her with Doita slung over one shoulder and Cai dangling from her other arm.
“Sorry,” she said with a little chuckle, and knelt to gently lay the two out. “Now that you’re all safe, Captain Kamikoshi’s gonna come and finish things up. Don’t worry, though; she’s not that scary.”
If she weren’t, why did Seto even need to warn her? Benimori braced herself and prepared to receive boarders.