“One of the samurai cruisers in the harbor is tracking the Strato Carrier with its weapons,” Spooky reported when I came to check on him in the morning.

  “Really?” I frowned. “Both the Family and the government knew we were coming. You didn’t approach too close to the city or do anything that could be perceived as hostile, did you?”

  “Of course not. I’ve followed all the government’s guidelines. We’re still over twenty kilometers from the city,” Spooky replied indignantly.

  “Alright, alright. I trust you. I just wanted to double-check,” I said, holding up my hands in surrender.

  I wandered over to the nearby monitoring station and squinted at the external camera feed. Even though we were twenty kilometers away, we were high enough to have line-of-sight of the hostile ship, and the cameras had high enough resolution to get a clear picture. Although the ship wasn’t even half as long as the Strato Carrier, it was extremely heavily armed for its size. Most of the guns probably wouldn’t be able to reach us, but the oversized main cannon looked like it might.

  “Have they tried to contact us at all? Made any requests or demands?”

  “Nope. As far as I can tell, they’ve been completely radio silent since we arrived,” the bear reported.

  “Huh…” I muttered. “Nyx, what do you think our chances are if they open up on us? Are we safe here?”

  Based upon the profile, the ship’s primary cannons appear to be phasic plasmatic bombards. They’re messy things that surround the shell in a dimensional envelope that allows them to penetrate several feet of material before materializing and spraying hot plasma all over the target. If they manage to get a direct hit, they’ll cause havoc on the Strato Carrier’s systems, but they’re not as destructive as high-yield shells.

  The one major downside of a phasic bombard is the envelope around the shells will collapse early if it’s struck by an energy weapon, like a laser… or a particle beam.

  “So you’re saying it’s a good thing that the ship is absolutely covered in the PAWS Active protection systems,” I said. “And the armor?”

  Can weather enough shots for us to either back off or return fire.

  “Good,” I grumbled. “My first instinct is to turn the UHR their way, to let them know I don’t appreciate their hospitality, but they may take that as a sign of hostility, and I don’t want to take any chances while my family’s onboard.”

  I stared at the image for several more seconds before turning away. “Spooky, move the carrier away from the city. I want to be out of range of that thing’s guns before they decide to turn this standoff into a shooting match.”

  Spooky nodded, and even though he didn’t move from the spot or speak, I could feel the Carrier slowly begin to move.

  “What are you going to do?” the bear asked.

  “Try and get some answers,” I grumbled as I turned away and headed to a quiet corner of the bridge.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled up my augs to contact one of the only people in town that I knew had enough power to tell me what was going on.

  “Evelyn, I heard you were heading our way, but I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon,” Claire Monte purred as soon as the call connected. “What can I do for you today?”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “Celestia,” I growled, using her Samurai name to emphasize my displeasure. “Could you explain why a samurai-owned warship, sitting in the Seattle harbour, would be training its guns on me?”

  “Beg your pardon?” I could hear the confusion in her voice.

  “I said there’s a samurai cruiser in the harbour that’s tracking my ship with its weapons, and I’d like an explanation," I repeated. “I thought I had permission to visit.”

  “You do!” Claire replied before releasing a big sigh. “The problem is tensions are unusually high right now. Someone blew up a biotech building downtown the day before yesterday, and based upon preliminary inspection, the MO matches a couple of samurai-backed attacks that happened in Portland a couple weeks ago.”

  “And what does this have to do with me?” I asked.

  “Honestly, nothing. You weren’t in town when the attacks happened, so there shouldn’t be any suspicion on you,” Claire said. “The problem is, most Cascadian samurai don’t join the Family but one of the half dozen local factions, each with their own goals and ideals. Since we don’t know who’s responsible, the factions are all suspicious of each other and outsiders. A few factions just refuse to listen to reason, so it’s been a little bit of a Mexican standoff here the last few days.”

  “Ugh… You guys really have a real faction problem around here. First the city falls because of factional infighting, and when I come back just a year later, the city is so fucking fractured that someone is willing to target me with a fucking naval cannon just for showing up,” I grumbled.

  “I know, I’m sorry,” Claire sighed. “Alise and I have been doing our best to convince everyone to come together and find some common ground, but progress is slow.”

  “How the hell did the city survive if all these factions were squabbling between themselves?” I asked.

  “Because the only thing they can agree upon is ‘Antithesis bad’,” Claire snorted. “As soon as we finished securing the city, everyone went back to their infighting.”

  I slowly reached up and rubbed my forehead.

  “I’m so glad I don’t live here, and I’m only visiting,” I grumbled. After a few seconds a thought popped into my head. “You said it was a biotech company, right? Is this why I wasn’t allowed to visit the Safe Arbour project?”

  “Probably, the LandGuard almost lost the facility during the global incursion and has been extremely protective of it ever since,” Claire replied.

  “They’re called the LandGuard? Fuck… Even the undercity gangs had a better naming convention than that,” I grumbled.

  Claire snorted but didn’t comment.

  “I’m not going to get shot at if I approach the city in a Kodiak, am I? I have my family with me, so if anyone takes potshots at me, I’m going to be pissed…” I warned.

  “The factions might be stupid, but none of them should be stupid enough to shoot at a neutral party,” Claire explained. “They’d want to avoid possibly driving you into backing one of their enemies.”

  “Didn’t stop that idiot in the harbor from considering it,” I huffed. “Just let everyone you can know that I have no intention of getting caught up in their paranoid bullshit, and if anyone does fuck with me, they’re going to have teddy bears so far up their ass they’ll be tasting fur.”

  “I see you're as eloquent as ever,” Claire laughed. “I’ll make sure to pass on your message.”

  There was the faint sound of a scuffle, and the line clicked as another person connected.

  “Evelyn, you’re still going to let Claire and I take you out for dinner, right? I’ve been looking forward to meeting your family,” Claire’s much more free-spirited sister, Alise, asked excitedly as soon as she connected.

  “That’s the plan,” I replied, trying not to laugh at the sudden change of tone and her enthusiasm. “Assuming no one fucks with me while I’m here, and I manage to get in touch with Magpie so we can coordinate.”

  “Oh! She might be on a post-incursion lockdown right now,” Alise muttered. “Her wife nearly had a breakdown during the siege and demanded Maggie stay with her so they can have private time after every incursion going forward. I’ll call Valerie directly and see if she’ll let Maggie out to play.”

  “I never thought there’d be anyone capable of keeping Maggie focused and quiet for any length of time. Every time I met her, it seemed like her brain was going a mile a minute,” I said.

  “Val’s a special lady!” Alise replied. “I’ll give them a call and contact you later, okay?”

  “Sounds good,” I replied.

  “Kay, bye!” Alise crowed as she disconnected.

  “Well, that was fun,” Claire sighed. “Although I’m pretty sure that no one would outright attack you, give me a couple hours to contact everyone and let them know why you’re here and what’s going on. Hopefully once they know, everyone will chill out a little. Do you mind waiting a couple hours before heading over?”

  “I’m not in any rush,” I affirmed. “Let me know when you’re done. I’d like to show the family around.”

  “Sounds good,” Claire said. “Talk to you soon.”

  “Later,” I replied, as the line went dead. I took a moment to go over the whole conversation in my head before I turned and headed back to where Spooky was standing.

  “Why can’t anything be easy?” I muttered.

  Discord!

  Check out my Stories:

  Support me!

  Finally: Big thanks to all those people that review my draft, the chapters would be a lot rougher without your feedback!