Magnetic docking clamps latched onto the armored hulls of the captured warships with heavy, resonant thuds.
Aboard the disabled Destroyer Forty-Four, the crew compartments were dark and cold.
Two thousand lower-deck mechanics, ammunition loaders, and engine stokers huddled together in the gloom. They held rusty wrenches and scrap pipes in trembling hands, their eyes wide with dread.
Footsteps echoed through the corridor.
Heavy boots struck the iron deck grating. Then came the mechanical hiss of cutting torches slicing through the blast doors.
“They’re coming,” a young ammunition loader sobbed, burying his face in his grease-stained overalls. “They’re going to line us up against the bulkhead and shoot us. Sovereign Harkon told us that Taichu executes every captured sailor.”
Beside him, Gunner Toma gripped a dented iron spanner.
Toma was thirty-two years old. His knuckles were raw from handling scorching plasma valves, and his back was covered in whip scars from Blood-Tax disciplinary officers.
