The rain machine-gunned the deck from every direction at once. Even though the Omaru was a decent sized ship at a hundred and twenty-two feet, it still bucked up and down with each growing swell.

“Storm’ll be right over us in an hour, boss.” Brendan Cooper, his deck foreman, had to yell the words even though only standing a few feet away as the scream of the wind made everything seem like a whisper.

Still, Captain Will Harper’s trained ears heard every word. His stained slicker’s hood was pulled far down to keep the stinging rain from a face that was the texture of weathered teak, and he grabbed at its rim, looked up, and then nodded.

“Yup, get ‘em in, son. We’ll head in closer until it blows through.”

The Omaru was after the demeral fish – the bottom dwellers – like the Pacific cod and haddock. Ever since the ban on net fishing was lifted in 2015, the government had granted just a few precious licenses. Harper’s family had fished the area for two hundred years, and also had impeccable government connections, and so managed to secure one of the rare pieces of paper.

Right now they were on the edge of the continental shelf, eighty miles out from the Canadian-US border, with two nets still out. They’d need to be reeled in from deep water – fifteen hundred feet. They’d be partially full by now, so they could expect to take an hour to get them up and in.

Harper had no choice. Even though he knew they could ride out the storm, if the ship floundered and caused any sort of spill, he’d have a devil of a time trying to regain a license a hundred other boat owners would kill for. Better to play it safe and lose a few days, than lose the family business.

He checked his wristwatch, and then looked to the east. Though dawn was coming on, it was still as black as Hades out on the water. The bastard, boiling clouds above refused to let a dot of morning sunlight down for them.

The winches started up, and Harper felt the drag on the boat. They had two thousand horse power to call on and could get the high-powered vessel up to eight knots if need be, but for now, he’d keep the nose to the swell, and hold her steady while the bags were brought up from the deep.

He looked back down along the railing to the stern where the arc-spots threw huge pools of light down on the deck and surrounding water. The ship still rose and dipped, but his crew was experienced, sure-footed, and worked like the machines whining all around them. Looking briefly over the gunwale, he saw the water was a frothing iron-gray, and the super bright lights created a ball of illumination all around the Omaru.