Chapter 1: Reborn Beneath Black Water
The wheel fought him with every turn. James Calloway pulled it back exhaustingly, one hand gripping the handles while the other held a bottle of whisky. The bottle had survived more of the storm than the boat probably would.
Another wave rose out of the darkness ahead. Tall enough that he had to tilt his head back to see the top.
He laughed.
"Oh! Very dramatic. Very thorough. Ten out of ten."
The wave hit.
The deck vanished beneath him as the boat plunged down the far side. His knees bent automatically and his boots found grip without conscious thought. Experience took over where concern had stopped. His body still knew how to survive, even if the rest of him had stopped caring about the outcome.
He took a drink during the brief gap before the next wave.
"You know what’s funny?"
He asked the storm. The darkness. Whatever happened to be listening. "My mum had cancer for eighteen months while I was three thousand miles away on deployment. Then six months after she died, my dad just stopped."
The bow began climbing again. James leaned into the wheel.
"Grief, they called it. Like it’s a bloody diagnosis you can write on a chart."
The wind tore away the last of the sentence.
He laughed again. This time it wasn’t forced. Fear should have been there. Instead there was something lighter, buried beneath everything else.
"And then I get home!"
He shouted, because the storm seemed determined to make him work for every word, "And my fiancée’s moved a man called Greg into my side of the bed."
The absurdity of it still survived contact with reality.
"Greg from accounting. Lovely lad, apparently. Keeps his wee spice rack alphabetized. Now he’s sleeping in my flat, on my side of the bed, probably wearing my pajamas."
A wave slammed into the boat from the side.
Cold seawater drenched him from shirt to boots.
James spat saltwater and grinned into the darkness.
The wave had almost felt like part of the conversation.
"So here’s where we’re at."
His voice softened. He sounded almost fond.
Like he was finally speaking to an opponent who had shown up for a long-delayed fight.
"I’ve got nothing left for you to take. I checked. Twice. So whenever you’re ready."
The Atlantic, it seemed, had been waiting for permission.
James spotted the next wave.
The moment he saw it, he knew there was no avoiding it.
It wasn’t a wave so much as a wall, dark and massive.
The boat was already climbing it.
There wasn’t enough time to do anything except acknowledge the situation.
"Aye. Fair enough."
The wave swallowed the boat.
Cold struck from every direction at once.
It felt less like weather and more like judgment.
His arms moved for a while. Years of training demanded an attempt. But eventually he stopped trying.
There was nothing left to do.
The sounds of the storm changed as he sank. The chaos above faded. The crashing winds became distant vibrations. He felt them more than heard them.
The cold changed too, it stopped fighting him.
By then, he had stopped fighting back.
He closed his eyes.
Then, something hard pressed against his shoulder.
The back of his head burned.
James came off the floorboards immediately, one hand reaching for the pain before he fully understood where he was.
His fingers came away wet.
Blood, dark blood. It wasn’t fresh.
The floor lurched beneath him in short, violent motions.
A sharp crack exploded nearby. He felt it in his teeth.
Men shouted somewhere beyond the walls. The tone wasn’t for bad weather.
Then came the scent.
Smoke.
Burning wood.
Salt.
Beneath it all lingered the heavy, damp odor of an old ship.
A ship made of wood and faith.
James stood.
He hadn’t consciously decided to. His balance simply adapted to the deck’s movement the way it always had.
That was the only familiar thing about the situation.
Everything else was weird.
His hands were weird.
He held them up toward the lantern light and studied them.
Callouses and scars he didn’t remember.
A pale mark crossed the left forearm where a rope had clearly snapped under tension and taken flesh with it.
If these weren’t his hands, then something else wasn’t adding up either.
A bowl sat nearby on a shelf, half-filled with water. The ship’s motion sent the surface sloshing back and forth.
James leaned over it.
The face staring back wasn’t his.
Dark hair, longer than he kept it.
A jaw weathered by years under the sun.
Grey-green eyes widened by the confusion he felt.
A nose that had been broken once and healed badly.
A newer scar cut through the left side of the chin.
James studied it for a moment.
Then he sighed.
"That ain’t great."
The shouting outside grew louder.
Something struck the hull hard enough to send water spilling from the bowl across his hands.
"Christ, can’t a man have some peace."
Hello. I see you survived the transmigration. I want to be clear that I had accounted for both outcomes, so this isn’t a surprise so much as a preference being fulfilled. Welcome to the experiment. Please try not to embarrass us both immediately.
James froze.
The cabin was empty.
He checked again.
No hidden speaker. No person in the corner.
Nothing.
"Right," he said slowly. "Okay. Sure. Why not. There’s a voice in my head now. Add it to the pile."
The pile, for reference, now includes one drowned naval officer, one dead pirate captain, and a body both of you have made a mess of. You’re in the Caribbean, the year is 1716, and you command a brigantine currently losing to a French Navy vessel. The crew through that door would very much like their captain to start being one again.
James processed that.
Drowned naval officer. That was him.
Dead pirate captain. That was his body.
French warship. The hell?
None of those facts made sense together.
Before he could decide which impossibility to address first, something appeared in front of him.
Letters, clean and sharp, suspended in the air.
Like a sign hanging in the middle of a sinking ship.
⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]
Baptism by Fire
While you were absent, your crew has continued fighting without you. Poorly, but persistently. The French vessel currently holds the advantage. Your next decision will determine whether you still have a ship, and whether you still have a crew worth calling a crew.
Reward: ???
Attempt to survive your first day in your new life. I would wish you luck, but that would imply optimism, and I am not equipped with that particular subsystem.
James read the message.
Then he read it again because he couldn’t believe his eyes.
The second pass didn’t improve matters.
"Baptism by fire," he muttered. "That clears things right up, thanks."
A battle was happening, that much seemed clear.
The objective suggested he was responsible for the ship.
The voice claimed he was the captain.
Whether any of it was true hardly mattered.
People outside were fighting, and if their side lost, he probably would be hanged as a pirate.
That part was definitely real.
James crossed the cabin.
His hand found the latch before his eyes focused on it.
The familiarity caught his attention immediately.
That wasn’t his memory, it couldn’t be.
A name surfaced at the edge of his thoughts.
James Calloway,
It was his name. It was also the name of the body he possessed.
His feet adjusted automatically to the ship’s motion.
Again, not his habit, or at least not entirely.
Whatever remained of the man who had owned this body hadn’t disappeared completely.
Some instincts had stayed behind.
James pulled open the door.
The night hit him at once.
Smoke.
Noise.
Movement.
A fight.
Men struggled across the deck with cutlasses, pistols, and bare hands. One body lay near the rail, unmoving.
Dead or wounded, he didn’t have the time to check.
Off the port side sat a French warship.
Close.
Far too close.
Each gunfire flash painted it orange against the darkness.
Smoke rolled across black water.
Something on deck was burning.
James immediately realized two problems.
The ship was under attack.
And everyone aboard expected him to know what to do about it.
Several crewmen turned toward the doorway.
In the middle of the battle, they stopped just long enough to look at the man standing where their captain was supposed to be.
