The sea mist off Point Sentinel was bitter, cold, and laced with the smell of wet coal smoke.
Out in the deep-water channel, four miles past the Harbor Gate breakwater, the ocean looked like rolling black glass. The six heavy twin-funneled ironclads of the European Syndicate lay anchored across the mouth of the bay in a tight, overlapping crescent. Their dark grey hulls rode low in the swell, their double-barreled main turrets swung outward, pointing their eighteen-inch rifled barrels directly toward the inner harbor.
They were not flying imperial flags. They flew the plain, indigo ensigns of the International Maritime Trust—a private corporate fleet hired by the ruined banking houses of Zurich and London to execute a total physical blockade.
