Fire on the Water

The humid night air on the deck of the Sea Dragon was thick enough to taste. The only light came from a sliver of moon, occasionally obscured by scudding clouds, and the faint, ghostly bioluminescence in the junk's wake. In his cramped cabin, Mr. Finch worked by the dim, shielded glow of a lantern, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple as he focused on the faint, rhythmic clicks in his headphones.

A new message from Lion was coming through. The process was slow, painstaking, each letter group deciphered one at a time from his one-time pad. As the words formed on his notepad, he felt a familiar, cold thrill. The game was changing.

ORCHID, the message read. YOUR REPORTS ON QING ADMINISTRATIVE STRAIN ARE VALUABLE. CONFIRM OUR ASSESSMENT. MOVING TO PHASE TWO. WILL EXPLOIT IDENTIFIED WEAKNESSES TO TEST RESPONSE CAPABILITIES. A NEW ASSET, CODENAME 'CLOG', IS NOW ACTIVE IN BATAVIA. YOUR ROLE IS TO OBSERVE AND REPORT ON QING FLEET RESPONSE TO ANY UNEXPECTED MARITIME INCIDENTS. DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT MAKE CONTACT. MAINTAIN YOUR COVER. LION.

Finch finished decoding and burned the notes, crumbling the ash into the sea. His mission had just shifted. He was no longer just a passive listening post. He was now the forward observer for an active operation. Abernathy was no longer content to just listen to the hornet's nest; he was about to start poking it with a stick.

Miles to the south, in the sprawling, chaotic port of Batavia, the stick was being sharpened. In the back room of a grimy tavern that reeked of stale beer, cheap gin, and desperation, Agent 'Clog' met his asset. Clog was a man who fit the scenery perfectly. He was burly and thick-necked, with a network of faded scars on his face and knuckles that spoke of a life lived in hard places. He looked like a dock foreman or a mercenary, and he had been both. He was the SIS's blunt instrument.

Across the table from him sat a Dutchman named Van der Meer. Before the Qing invasion, Van der Meer had been a man of substance, the owner of a vast and profitable rubber plantation. Now he was a ghost, a man hollowed out by rage and loss. The Qing had seized his land, his home, his fortune, and relegated him to this squalid, powerless existence.

Clog didn't waste time with appeals to patriotism or the glory of the old Dutch empire. He spoke the only two languages Van der Meer had left: revenge and money.

"The Qing seized your land, Van der Meer," Clog said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "They humiliated you. Your government is broken, and mine cannot intervene officially. It would mean war." He slid a heavy leather satchel onto the table. "But a private consortium of European investors would be very interested in seeing the Qing's rubber and tin shipments… disrupted. We hear you are a man who still commands some loyalty among your former workers. We can provide the tools. You provide the local knowledge and the angry men."

Van der Meer's eyes, dull with despair, lit with a sudden, hateful fire. He didn't even ask who the investors were. He didn't care. He opened the satchel. Inside, nestled in oilcloth, were six dark, metallic objects, each the size of a dinner plate. They were British naval limpet mines, compact, powerful, and utterly deniable.

"Tell me what you need done," Van der Meer whispered, his voice hoarse with venom.

A few nights later, the port of Batavia was a maze of swinging lanterns, shouting voices, and the dark, looming shapes of merchant ships being loaded under the watchful eyes of Qing marine patrols. A small, unassuming fishing boat, its engine muffled, slipped out of a darkened inlet, rowing silently through the forest of anchor chains. In it were Van der Meer and two of his most trusted former foremen, their faces grim in the darkness.

They navigated toward a Qing merchant steamer, the Tianjin Pride. The ship was low in the water, its holds filled to capacity with raw rubber, a vital strategic material bound for the insatiable military arsenals of the Chinese mainland. Under the ship's broad stern, shielded from the view of the deck patrols, they worked with a silent, desperate efficiency. Van der Meer, his hands surprisingly steady, attached the magnetic mines to the ship's hull, just below the waterline. He twisted the chemical fuses, setting the timers for three hours. Long enough for the ship to be well clear of the harbor and in the deep water channel. They slipped away as they had come, melting back into the shadows of the port.

Hours later, the Tianjin Pride was a steady silhouette against the pre-dawn sky, steaming north into the Java Sea. The mood on the bridge was relaxed. The harbor pilot had been dropped off, and the long, monotonous voyage had begun.

Without warning, a series of muffled, gut-punching explosions ripped through the ship's hull. They were not loud, spectacular blasts, but deep, powerful concussions that buckled the steel plates and tore open the ship's belly. Alarms shrieked to life. The ship, heavily laden and mortally wounded, began to list with terrifying speed. The sea rushed into the holds, the weight of the water and the shifting cargo pulling the vessel down. Within ten minutes, the Tianjin Pride was gone, dragged beneath the waves in a vortex of churning water and escaping air. There were few survivors to tell the tale, and those who were pulled from the water could only speak of a sudden, violent lurch from below.

The news hit Admiral Meng Tian's headquarters in Anjer like a physical blow. An accident? A boiler explosion? The initial reports were chaotic. But Meng Tian, reading the dispatch, felt a cold knot tighten in his stomach. Boilers did not explode in a series of muffled concussions below the waterline. This was no accident.

His strategy of pacification, of winning hearts and minds with compassion and fair dealing, had been met with hard, violent sabotage. He immediately suspected a British hand, a move too subtle and deniable for the Americans, too precise for local rebels.

On the deck of the Sea Dragon, far to the north, Finch's wireless crackled to life as the Qing naval patrols began broadcasting frantic, uncoded messages about the sinking. He dutifully transcribed the chaos—the conflicting reports, the dispatch of search-and-rescue vessels, the orders for heightened security in the port. He relayed it all to London, a cool, detached observer painting a picture of Qing confusion and vulnerability.

Meng Tian stood before his grand map of the East Indies. He had won the war of ships in a single, brilliant battle. But as he looked at the web of vital shipping lanes that were the lifeblood of his new province and the fuel for the Emperor's war machine, he realized the true war was just beginning. Every single one of those blue lines was now a battlefield. Every one of his ships was a target. He was fighting a new, unseen war against an enemy who used fire on the water, a war that his honor, his compassion, and his powerful fleet might not be equipped to win.