A/N: Please excuse any formatting issues that may arise from posting on FFN. These are written on Google Docs for posting to AO3 and some of the formatting doesn't carry over correctly. Typhoon Rising may also be found on AO3 under the same name.

Thank you for reading; You give my writing purpose.

Chapter 1: A Spark

DAEGU CITY, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF DAEGU

440 A.C.

The streets were cold and dirty, the steady trickle of rain adding to the puddles on Daegu City's crowded walkways. The bright neon colors of billboards and huge television screens shone through the night as if it were not there, their words in Koryo, Nippon, and Magadanian beckoning the millions of inhabitants of the metropolis to spend, spend, spend.

He was not here to spend, however.

One thing and one thing only was on Aldar Chakhar's mind and not even the rain could change it. He kept the leather satchel close to him, tucked under his arm. To an outsider, he was like any other white-collar worker returning home after a long day on the job, trying to keep his work-related items - documents and otherwise - safe from the elements. The weather further persuaded the people of Daegu to keep their heads low and not take in the sternness at which he walked.

Chakhar took a sharp turn down a darkened though still accessible alleyway. The neon signs here were replaced by street lamps and under them were the entrances to craft stores and "hole in the wall" restaurants, known only to the locals of the city as a safe haven from the onslaught of foreign tourists and businesspeople. Halfway down the alley was one such restaurant and outside it stood two men in long, dark overcoats. Aldar could feel their eyes bearing down on him under their sunglasses. He kept his head forward as he walked past the door and the two men, continuing on for ten or so meters. Once he felt like the eyes of the guards were trained upon someone else, he reached into his leather satchel with one hand and withdrew from it a black submachine gun. As he spun around, his other hand slapped the charging handle into firing position. The nearest guard shouted a command - Aldar's machine gun answered for him. The second guard met the same fate. In less than a second, the two men lay slouched against the wall.

Aldar Chakhar's job was not done however. He reloaded a magazine from his bag as the few onlookers in the alleyway who had witnessed the event scurried away. He was now on a timer. If he did not act quickly, his prey would evade him yet again.

Another black-suited guard appeared in the doorway, his handgun drawn. Chakhar slammed the door shut on his wrists, setting off a shot from the pistol into the alley before it fell to the ground. A burst from Aldar's submachine gun ended the guard's struggle before the assassin entered the restaurant. Immediately, the staccato of handgun fire resonated through the building. Chakhar shouldered his firearm and let loose, killing a guard that stood in the open as a second ran for cover behind a tipped-over wooden table. The machine gun cut a line through it and the man on the other side screamed in response.

The few restaurant-goers scrambled for the back rooms and kitchen. One, an Asian-looking man in a black suit, ran for a set of stairs opposite of these as two more gunmen ran down it. Chakhar dove for cover behind a supporting pillar as bullets ripped into its brick.

"Cover me, I'll flank him!" yelled one of the guards in Koryo. Another volley of pistol rounds struck the pillar as Chakhar tried to straighten himself against it. He saw one of the gunmen sprint around him with handgun drawn - A burst from Aldar's submachine gun cut him down at the knees. Aldar took the opportunity to race across the gap between his pillar and the next, giving him an angle on the remaining shooter. The two exchanged shots until a single bullet struck the guard's head.

Chakhar took a breath and sighed in relief before reloading his machine gun. He stepped over the body of the last shooter. "Federation pig," he spat and began to walk upstairs to a darkly lit hallway. He broke down its first door and was immediately met with inaccurate semi-automatic gunfire. Aldar stood to the side of the doorway and let the shooting come to an end.

"Stop. You are only delaying the inevitable," he yelled.

"You don't know what you are doing - !" came a frantic response. "- who you are messing with! I-I am a representative of the Federal Republic of Daegu!"

"I am aware, Han Seong-Jin. Your time has come to an end. Lay down your weapon and I will make this as swift as I can."

"The- the Federal Police have already been notified, they are on their way, you will not live to see-"

Chakhar turned the corner with his weapon tucked into his armpit. Han stood in the middle of the bedroom with his mistress as a human shield. He pointed the handgun at Chakhar and pulled the trigger. It only clicked in response, its firing hammer falling on nothing but cold steel. Aldar only laughed and unloaded his magazine center-mass into the representative's hostage. The bullets ripped through her and into him and they both collapsed to the floor. Blood trickled from Han's mouth but his eyes stayed open. He tried to mutter something but couldn't find the air to speak.

Now came the most important part of the operation. Chakhar dropped a backpack from his back and unfurled a bicolor blue-cyan flag with a white diamond in its center. He hung it up on the back wall opposite of the door he came in. Then, he pulled a tripod and video camera out and went to work setting them up next to the doorway, making sure to place the flag and the representative's dying body in the camera's viewfinder. Lastly, he pulled a balaclava over his head, pressed a red button marked "LIVE", and stepped back.

"Citizens of the Federation!" he started in Koryo. "For a century, your nation has starved and oppressed the free peoples of the Ring of Fire and beyond, pillaging our resources and sending our sons to fight in your wars! Millions have been squashed under your iron boot to line the pockets of your executives while nothing has been given back to those you occupy! Your cities grow endlessly, your factories making enough weapons to end the world twice-over while your citizens have never endured the hardship of my countrymen! Today, your days of safety come to an end. For every one of my brothers and sisters to have perished in the last war, ten citizens of Nippon, Daegu, and Nanhai will meet their same fate, starting with those executives responsible!" He smiled under his mask and racked the slide on his handgun.

"Glory to Cascadia!"

PRESIDIA, CASCADIA

"...after representative to the Federation's Supreme Council Seong-Jin Han was murdered on livestream last night…"

"Get a load of this, Cap'n!"

The wardroom was lively this morning, the captain thought. Several of his officers were gathered around the room's only television whose satellite reception was spotty at best in this part of the world due to high volumes of cordium in the atmosphere. The ship's commissioned men had plates of fried corned beef and scrambled eggs, and most had a cup of coffee or grape juice, a Cascadian staple. They were happy to be up - it was their last day of this deployment and the chef had prepared a hearty meal to celebrate.

"What is it?" the captain's gruff voice called.

"Some Fed government somethin' or other up and got himself shot. The killer recorded and shot it all live. They're sayin' it was a Cascadian radical, cap'n," replied the first watch officer. The captain grunted in response and sipped on his coffee. He was a reserved man, quiet but radiating confidence. At well over six feet, he was tall and broad, his left breast adorned with service ribbons and badges and his right with a bronze plate that proudly displayed his name:

WOODWARD.

Captain - soon to be Rear Admiral - Charles Woodward kept a passive look while he listened to the reporter. It was easy behind his thick, black beard. Inside though he felt that something wasn't right. Political violence was not exactly uncommon along the Ring of Fire and especially not within a nation with as many competing views as the Pacific Federation. But this one felt… different. He checked his watch: 0553. In a little more than an hour he would be on dry land. It had been refreshing to wake up this morning to the sound of seagulls and the sight of his fleet's home port on the horizon.

They had been at sea for seven months now, the longest for any Cascadian warship to date in the decade following their war for independence. Woodward was more than proud to be the one to do it, testing the limits of the Cascadian Navy at every turn. It was this attitude that had earned him his place here as skipper of Eminent Domain, his nation's most powerful surface combatant. As he rose from his seat in the officer's wardroom and began his walk forward to the vessel's pilot house, he was reminded of just how massive she was. Despite being a thousand feet long and displacing over 95,000 tons of water at standard load, there wasn't an inch of wasted space here. The officer's mess was situated as close as possible to the spiral staircase leading up to the con and still the captain had to traverse past a supply closet and a weapons locker to get there.

"I'll take it from here, Archie," said the captain as he entered the bridge, half scaring his executive officer with his sudden arrival.

"Aye," he saluted back. "Captain has the con!"

From the bridge Woodward could see everything. The entrance to the port to the entire front third of his command, it was all visible. It was beautiful out, fitting for another successful end to a voyage. The sun peaked just barely out behind Presidia's sprawl, casting purple and orange rays in the gaps between its high rises in his direction. Woodward cracked a smile as a pod of dolphins leaped into the air off the battleship's port bow, following their wake. It was good to be home.

A horn sounded from a harbor tug as it joined up with Eminent Domain from the front. The last hour of their journey would be the most precarious, more dangerous than the worst storm they had faced at sea. Here, he would face all manner of rocks and shoals, other ships hoping to dock and…

Shipwrecks.

Eminent Domain had been among those that had sunk here in Presidia's harbor eight years ago. How could Woodward forget, when he had a front row seat to it all? The city, suddenly consumed in flame, his own fleet, reduced to a smoldering wreck. It took a full year to raise his mighty battleship and another two to restore it to working condition. The same could not be said of the two dozen other vessels he commanded here or the men that had crewed them. Here they remained in their watery graves, locations mapped and charted for other ships that would use the harbor they had given their lives to take back, a reminder for all of the sacrifice that had been made. The captain quietly paid his respects as they passed by a memorial that sat anchored above one of these wrecks, a destroyer that had gone down with all hands.

Before long, a squadron of tugs joined the one guiding the warship into port, forming up alongside the battleship. They would take over now and Woodward's job would be to sit and watch as they navigated them to dock. Watch he did, proud of his crew, proud of himself. As was custom, the enlisted men began to line the deck, raising caps and waving to those ashore that watched the behemoth slip into the harbor. Coming up on the concrete docking infrastructure, mooring lines were dropped and tall metal gangways were pushed up to allow the crew to come to shore.

Now would begin the nine month process of restoring Eminent Domain to serviceable status while her crew rested ashore. Already as her men shuffled down the stairs personnel from land came aboard and had begun the arduous process of refitting and rearming the battleship. Everything not bolted down (and some things that were) would be torn out, replaced with new parts and equipment. Her guns would be thoroughly cleaned, her missile tubes refilled. To round it out, she would receive a fresh coat of black radar absorbant paint to match her stealthy angular shape. Her crew, meanwhile, would train. Some would transfer to new posts, moved up or onto other vessels. Others would stay here, tending to Domain as she rested. Woodward did not yet know where his expected new command would take him.

It would have been fitting for the captain to be the last to leave the docked vessel though that would not be the case today. Her twin nuclear reactors needed a constant team of professionals watching over them which would stay behind another day to oversee the transition to the land based team. Woodward thus stepped down from the ship, taking one last look at her, accepting that she was in good hands in his absence. It didn't take long - only a minute, in fact - for him to run into someone he knew on the pier.

"Captain," said the male voice.

"Arnold."

The two met with a handshake and smile. "She's as beautiful as the day you stole her," the second man joked.

"And I'll be damned the day they take her back!" the captain laughed in return. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mister Franken?"

"Good timing, I suppose. We're in recess until next weekend and I heard you were in town."

The two exchanged pleasantries as they made their way down the pier, briefly catching up on the simple things life had thrown their way. It was much too early for alcohol so they settled for coffee and tea at the naval base's onsite cafe. With small talk out of the way, it was time for more serious business.

"How are the talks going?" Woodward asked in a hushed tone, leaning across the table toward Franken. "Columbia's a long way from home."

"Indeed. I wish I could say it was all smooth sailing, but we are making progress."

"Oh?"

"Mhmm. A deal with the steel mills in Willis City, another with the shipbuilding firms up in New England… Nothing solid yet, but we're getting there."

Woodward leaned back in his chair and took a drink from his mug. "What's the holdup then? They only tell us so much on the news."

"The 'mercenary question', as one ambassador put it." Woodward thought it ironic, coming from the man in front of him. "Most of the smaller periphery states don't care but we need the support of the big ones for this to go anywhere. Creole, New Cuba… Most of them don't have standing armed forces and rely on our contractors as it is, so making it official wouldn't change anything for them. But the regional powers over there are afraid this is all some hostile takeover. Not that I can blame them."

The two thought for a moment. For the glory seeker that once called himself "Kaiser", the next logical step up from being a war hero was to write policy. Politics came naturally to Franken, but it wasn't the domestic kind he cared for. He answered to the Cascadian Department of State as an official ambassador from Presidia, and the decision to put him in charge of the delegation that represented Cascadia at the Pan-American Conference in Columbia had been an obvious one with all the contacts he kept in the periphery. In this way he would make history, far more than would he by flying fighter jets for backwater warlord states. After all, the age of wars between major powers was over, wasn't it?

That was the prevailing belief, at least. They had all gotten it out of their system back in the Cascadian Conflict, or the War of Independence as they called it here. In this very city, the raw destructive power of modern cordium tipped weapons has been shown, enough that it was thought that no nation would again wage war when the threat of mutual destruction was so nigh.

"You think that assassination of that Fed rep' will change anything?" Woodward asked.

Arnold's response was already thought out. "Probably not, besides reinforce what the big states were already thinking." He took a sip of his tea and scratched at his beard. Franken continued in his typical theatrical voice, as though he was giving a speech. "I'll keep pushing. We won't get everything we want, not this time, but it's a step in the right direction. One day, Captain, we'll be whole again. One people, one nation, from sea to shining sea."

And that was something they could drink to.

UNKNOWN LOCATION

The orders came from up high, as they usually did. That wasn't the unusual part.

It had become something of an industry joke. They all knew how to do it, theoretically. It wasn't all that complicated or difficult to understand from a theoretical standpoint and from a technical one they all had the experience and knowhow. Any engineer working in the post-Calamity energy industry knew how it all worked from a scientific point of view. So they joked, throwing up ideas of the best, most efficient ways to make it work for them, for their country. Nothing on paper, of course. That would make it official. But in their heads, they all had ideas.

But when the orders came, when it wasn't theoretical any more, none of them laughed.

They weren't supposed to think of the politics of it all. They were engineers, not politicians. It wasn't their job to consider the ramifications of the orders they were given. How could you not, though? How could you build something like that without thinking of the moral implications first, especially with everything their nation had gone through in the last decade?

The chief engineer gathered his team and laid everything out. There were twenty of them and most of them had been here since before the War of Independence. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be them. They accepted their task with quiet nods and got to work.