Tokikichi Matsuda, captain of the Orchid Bloom, took the cigarette from his lips and silently cursed the storm outside. Where had it even come from? The weather reports this morning had proclaimed mild winds and calm seas, and suddenly a bare sixteen hours from the port of Long Beach he was sailing through a damned hurricane!

  Well, tell a lie. It was a tropical storm at best. But the point was that it was where it should not have been. He had been sailing this route for years, first as a seaman on a merchant marine vessel, then working his way up the ranks to first mate, and now as captain of his very own ship, and he had never seen weather just pop up like this. Were he a man of religion like his ancestors, he might almost believe that the spirit of the sky was cross at the world and venting its spleen upon the hapless mortals.

  The cook’s excellent dinner from earlier this evening roiled in his gut as the Orchid, the most ungainly ship on the seven seas and he said it himself, rolled and dipped through ten foot swells that made her bob like a cork. The heavy vessel took a particularly bad lurch, and the captain had to put out a hand on his console to steady himself.

  “What the hell is with this weather?” A gruff voice from his left snarled practically in unison with the banging open of the hatch to the outside. His first mate Tetsuo came storming in almost as hard as the rain beating against the bulkheads.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Akuji,” Tokikichi said. “The cargo is secure?”

  “Aye,” the old seaman wiped rainwater from his eyes and slapped his sopping wet cap back on his head. “Crew’s got them all clamped and strapped. You could roll this entire pig over in the water and they wouldn’t budge an inch.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Excellent,” Tokikichi said. “Once the storm passes, we will hold a small celebration for their hard work. I may even allow them a bottle from my personal stash.”

  “I’ll pass that along,” The mate threw what any number of militaries around the world would have been horrified to discover was supposed to be a salute and bulled back out into the storm, cursing again as the Orchid lurched beneath him once more.

  Tokikichi grimaced. He had once thought to instill a more respectful vocabulary into the man, but the old sea dog was as set in his ways as the ancient stones of his homeland, and would be neither moved nor swayed from saying what was on his mind.

  And in one sense at least he was correct, the Orchid was a pig in this sea. Big and boxy, designed by some engineer somewhere to carry the maximum amount of wheeled vehicles from the factories where they were produced to the show rooms where they would be sold. She was ungainly to look at, a bitch to helm on the best days, and fully loaded as she was today she was even worse.

  He should have objected when his corporate masters filled his holds. He should have demanded more time to deliver, but the bonus they had offered him and his crew had been staggering and had overruled his good judgment. And besides, this damned storm should not be here.

  He wondered, almost idly, as the ship lurched again and the most excellent dinner from earlier threatened to force its way back up his esophagus, just who in the world his cargo was going to, anyways. Probably some startup on the mainland, or perhaps Amazon was starting up a new distribution center somewhere.

  After all, who else would require an entire car-carrier’s worth of delivery trucks on such short notice?