Nightmare on the high seas.

[Lai Ch'oi Kidd]

"They offered war rather than kisses." - Saxo Grammaticus

The jolt of the ten gun sloop-of-war slamming its hull into the much larger sixteen gun merchant ship was brutal. Several men aboard the sloop who had been ill-prepared for the rough collision fell over board before they were even able to cross over the bow of the sloop into the merchant. The noise of splintering wood and the shouts of angry and wild men filled the late afternoon air.

A compact, petite woman stood on the weather deck in the waist of the sloop, The Golden Grace, silently watching the scene unfold. Her deceivingly delicate features and rich skin tone made her Asian ancestry quite clear. Straight dark hair hung long past her shoulders with the front half pulled back in a bun and intertwined with a striking green silk ribbon. Jade earrings hung from her ears and a number of jade bracelets circled her wrists, clinking together lightly as she moved. Her beauty was exotic and natural and, most of all, unimportant to those around her. She stood with a confidence that seemed to make her, despite her small stature, the tallest person on board. Her tongue slipped across her thin parched lips, desperate for some relief.

"Board the ship!" the woman's voice suddenly rang out fiercely above the clamor as she began to quicken her strides towards the front of the ship. A loutish cheer rang out among the men as they scrambled over the deck, clashing with sailors from the merchant ship, the Silver Spoon. The grunts of hand-to-hand combat and the clattering metal of swords being crossed fueled the adrenaline.

The woman briefly noticed the large tattered hole in the mainstaysail as she passed on her way to join the fray. No bother. The hole could be fixed once victory was attained. The woman's goal was larger than gold. Her goal here was larger than opiates. Her goal was even larger than infamy. The woman let out a guttural shout, pulling the saber at her side free from its sheath. She did not blink an eye at the savagery around her. She had seen it before. She had grown up amongst it. Life. Death. It had no meaning.

One of her small, dainty slippered feet stepped on top of the figurehead beneath the bowsprit. Not all ships had figureheads of bare-breasted women. The captain of the Golden Grace saluted her ancestry with the ornate carving of a dragonhead. In a flat second, she was onto the wooden planks of the merchant's deck. The blood that was now flowing on the deck stained the cloth of her soft slippers and the cries of dying men were wretched. Little of that mattered. Her senses were focused on finding the merchant ship's captain. She shoved past entanglements of men fighting to the death and stepped over the fallen corpses that would feed the sharks that infested these waters in several hours times. Her eyes were set on searching out her prey.

A sudden glint of steel caught her attention and she turned the lightweight saber in her hand in just enough time to stop the incoming attack.

The attacker's clean-cut appearance and his disciplined swing of the blade gave away his rank even before the Golden Grace's captain could narrow her dark gaze on his face to recognize his rugged, weathered features. "I will die before you dirty pirates stink up my ship with your filth," the man growled at his opposition. The word "pirate" was flung insultingly as would the word "whore" or "slut" by another man. The woman knew her opponent meant all three. She knew much about this man.

A half-smirk flirted on the woman's thin lips as her dark almond eyes watched him between the crossed blades. "I prefer entrepreneur. 'Pirate' is such a dirty word, no?"

The captain of the Silver Spoon pushed his weight against her blade, snarling. "Have you no honor at all?" She stumbled back a step as he attempted to overpower her and then braced herself against the blade. She could feel his hatred. She could feel his desire for her death. Death. Perhaps death would be a relief. A pathetic ending to a life of hell. No, death did matter this time. Her goal mattered. She must remember what they were fight for -- the fate of the six year old daughter of the captain of the Silver Spoon.

"Honor? Where has honor ever gotten my gender? I will kill you and show that pretty little daughter of yours out of your honorable world." With those bitter words towards the man she once shared so many intimacies, she viciously swung the blade around, looking to divert his attention low. Excitement boiled forth. Her eyes burned with the energy. Her heart pumped loudly.

The opposing captain fell for the diversion, bringing his defenses low and leaving himself open high. The victory was bittersweet to the sloop's captain. It was almost too easy. The excitement would dissipate. Any fight left in the merchant captain's men would die with the death of their leader. Yet, it must be done. This time there was a greater cause than just the thrill of the fight. The young woman pulled her blade high and pushed in with lethal force. Fear suddenly registered in the man's eyes. He had been had. His death was at hand and would be delivered with such crushing beauty in both its method of delivery and its deliverer.

The woman shoved the blade forth and through... nothing but air. Suddenly the inhabitants on board disappeared. The saber slipped from her hand and clattered to the wooden ship planks as the captain of the sloop swiveled around. She was back on her own ship and was surrounded by nothingness. Her sailors were gone. The ship was empty. The Silver Spoon was gone. The only sound was that of the mainsail whipping in the breeze above her. Yet, the emptiness that surrounded her was nothing compared to the emptiness that burned inside of her.

She shut her large almond-shaped eyes tightly. Whispering with chant-like precision over and over, "It's only a nightmare. I will wake up shortly. It's only a nightmare. I will wake up shortly."

[Lai Ch'oi Kidd]

Captain Lai Ch'oi Kidd awoke from the nightmare in the grand cabin of the Golden Grace with a heaving intake of air. Her bedsheets were drenched with sweat and the stale air of the cabin made it hard for her to catch her breath. Lai unraveled herself from the sheets and pushed herself to her bare feet. The light of the full moon shined brightly through the slits of the shuttered windows of the cabin from the stern of the boat.

Her lithe frame was still clad in her day clothes which, while scandalous in some corners, allowed her to move with ease and little discomfort on the ship and through the sails. Loose, flowing harem-style pants sat low on her narrow hips while a form fitting top made of the same soft material left much more of her upper half revealed than was typically thought to be decent. Men aboard did not gape at the cleavage exposed or the woman's flat, tight stomach. Perhaps it was because they knew the punishment would be regretfully severe or perhaps they simply did not see their captain as a woman. She was lethal, deadly, and unmerciful -- certainly not a dainty, nurturing traditional female.

The bells rang out, signaling a change in deckhands. From that sound, Lai guessed it to be several hours until daylight. Her body screamed at her to return to sleep but her mind was afraid to give in, afraid that nightmares of the past would revisit yet again tonight. Lai huffed at herself. The Captain of the Golden Grace had no fears, least of all some nonsense nightmare.

She pulled a soft knitted shawl off the back of her desk chair and threw it on over her shoulders. She reassured herself that the nightmare was just that, a simple nightmare. The merchant captain from her nightmare had indeed died several years before. The ship and sailors had not disappeared. The encounter was historic and history.

The shawl was proof of the latter. The daughter of the Silver Spoon's captain had knitted it for her. Lai had tried to convince the girl that she need not stoop herself to knitting any longer. Yet, the young girl insisted that it helped her relax. Lai decided that such a relaxation technique was better than the imbibing that most sailors did so she no longer fought the girl in ridding the last vestige of her prior life as a caged song bird.

Pulling the shawl around her body to fight off the chill that the layer of sweat had created, Lai stepped out of her cabin. The salty sea air felt sweet as it hit her lungs after the stuffy air of the cabin. The guard at her door gave her a polite nod. Discipline and respect were the two keys to running a ship, in Lai's opinion. She returned the nod in kind. Respect was a two-way street.

"Mother?" the soft voice of the merchant captain's daughter called to Lai. Lai turned on her heels to watch the child, now eight years of age, step out of the great cabin in her rumpled bed clothes.

"Come here," Lai motioned to the child, pulling the shawl off her shoulders. The breeze tossed the girl's jet black hair, a trait she had inherited from Lai, as she ran to catch up. Lai laid the shawl over the child's shoulders, taking her hand tightly as she led her towards the weather deck. The stillness of the predawn hours leant intimacy to the moment. Rough sailors gave nods as they headed to work or stumbled half-asleep to their hammocks in the B cabin. Hand-in-hand, mother and daughter peered off into the distance.

A ship's captain has few friends. Fraternizing with crew could destabilize the delicate hierarchy of an entrepreneur ship. The life of a captain was an isolated existence. The child had changed all of that. The daughter of the merchant captain of the Silver Spoon and the pirate captain of the Golden Grace; the heir of a great sailing legacy.

The twinkling lights of a large city were beginning to become visible far past the bowsprit. Lai reached out her free hand to point at the city they were closing in on. "Is that it?" a sense of awe overwhelmed the young girl's tone.

Lai face glowed with a smile down at her daughter. "Yes. That is the infamous RhyDin."