The tropical night over the Sandheads—the treacherous, shifting shoals where the Ganges delta drops precipitously into the deep blue depths of the Bay of Bengal—was thick with a suffocating, pre-monsoonal humidity. The Portuguese merchant galleon San Miguel, a massive, four-decked leviathan displacing over six hundred tons, rolled heavily in the slow swells. Laden to the absolute waterline with thousands of bolts of premium Dacca muslin, raw silk, and millions of silver pesos destined for the royal vaults in Lisbon, the San Miguel was the jewel of the seasonal commercial fleet.
On the quarterdeck, Captain Diogo de Silva paced with an anxious, hyper-vigilant energy. His standard matchlock musketeers stood along the wooden bulwarks, their glowing match-cords casting long, sinister orange reflections across the dark water. The recent, terrifying rumors circulating through the taverns of Chittagong had shattered the traditional complacency of the Portuguese navy. Over the past four months, three major merchant vessels had vanished without a trace into the central bay, leaving behind nothing but charred timber and floating silk.
Suddenly, a shrill cry cut through the steady patter of the sails from the crow's nest. "Shadow on the port quarter! No lights! She's coming in fast!"
Captain de Silva swung his brass looking glass toward the darkness. Out from the thick, rolling sea mist, a low, ghostly shape materialized like an engine of malice. It was one of the secret Gharial-class sloops, her dark sails completely blending into the midnight sky, her low-slung hull cutting through the water with an unnatural, silent velocity that defied the sluggish wind.
"Pirates!" de Silva roared, his voice cracking with immediate panic. "Clear for action! Bring the port batteries to bear! Light the matches!"
The Portuguese crew scrambled in chaotic confusion, their heavy, traditional bronze cannons fumbling on their thick wooden carriages as they tried to aim down at the rapidly approaching shadow. But the Gharial sloop operated on a completely different paradigm of warfare. Under the command of Captain Tenribatta, a scarred Bugis mariner whose family had been executed by the Portuguese in Malacca, the sleek sloop gracefully tacked across the San Miguel's massive, blind stern quarter, completely avoiding the destructive arc of her main broadside batteries.
"Present!" Tenribatta whispered in broken Portuguese, his voice carrying an eerie, calm malice.
Along the dark bulwarks of the sloop, thirty elite Khurda marine marksmen stepped forward. They did not carry standard, glowing matchlocks; instead, they bore the un-stamped, highly modified hybrids built in the shadows of Dhamra. The foundation of each weapon was a black-market Dutch snaphaunce early flint mechanism, but Vikramaditya's engineers had fundamentally re-engineered them, replacing the exposed, separate pan-covers with their own secret, single-piece enclosed frizzens. So even if a Portuguese managed to get their hands on this apparently black-market pirated muskets, they would see a standard, finicky snaphaunce of long time enemy and rival the Dutch.
As the San Miguel's officers scrambled to turn their stern chaser guns, the Khurda marines unleashed a synchronized, shattering volley. Unlike matchlocks, which gave away their positions minutes before firing through the glowing sparks of the matches, these upgraded snaphaunces erupted with an instantaneous, terrifying roar, the proprietary enclosed frizzens sparking flawlessly despite the damp sea spray that normally fouled foreign weapons. The high-velocity lead balls tore through the unprotected wooden quarterdeck of the galleon, instantly vaporizing the helmsman, the primary sailing master, and three junior officers in a cloud of splinters and blood.
Before the panicked Portuguese sailors could even reload their primitive weapons, the Gharial sloop pivoted violently, her raked bow slamming into the galleon's vulnerable midship with a bone-shattering crunch.
"Board!" Tenribatta roared, drawing a heavy, untraceable Arakanese cutlass.
The Khurda marines did not launch a chaotic, screaming melee charge; they advanced with the cold, mechanical uniformity of the regular line infantry. Stepping onto the San Miguel's main deck through the thick black powder smoke, they formed a tight, interlocking wall of steel cuirasses and helms. The Portuguese defenders lunged forward with their traditional curved rapiers and boarding pikes, but they ran directly into an unyielding, rhythmic engine of death.
The marines fired their secondary flintlock pistols at point-blank range, and the moment the shots were discharged, the soldiers did not waste time fumbling for backup swords. Instead, they utilized custom-fitted ring bayonets locked onto the modified foreign barrels, lunging forward with calculated geometric precision to pierce the throat and chest cavities of the Portuguese defenders. It was a slaughter. The traditional Portuguese swordsmen were systematically cut to ribbons before they could even close the physical distance, completely outmatched by a firing speed that required no matches.
Captain de Silva, bleeding profusely from a splinter wound to his shoulder, collapsed against the mainmast, staring up in absolute horror at the uniform, faceless line of his attackers.
"Who... who are you?" de Silva gasped, coughing up crimson foam. "What nation sends such devils?"
Captain Tenribatta stepped forward, his face completely shadowed under his wide-brimmed leather hat. He did not speak a single word of any Indian dialect. Leaning down, he spoke in a cold, flawless Lisbon accent that he had learned during years of captivity.
"We are the debt that the sea collects, Captain," Tenribatta whispered softly.
With a swift, unbothered motion, Tenribatta drove his blade through the captain's throat. The remaining Portuguese sailors, utterly broken by the unnatural speed and cold discipline of the attack, threw down their weapons and begged for mercy.
But mercy was a luxury that Vikramaditya's grand calculus could not afford. The secrecy of the Dhamra yards depended entirely on the total absence of survivors who could describe the specific weapons used. Under the strict, pre-written protocols designed by the prince, the Executor Division agents on board immediately went to work. The captured silver pesos and high-value silk were rapidly transferred to the sloop's hold, while the surviving Portuguese crew members were methodically bound in heavy iron chains, their legs secured to the San Miguel's spare anchors.
An hour before dawn, the hull of the glorious merchant galleon was scuttled, her bottom blown out by concentrated charges of high-granulation powder. As the San Miguel slid into the deep, dark abyss of the ocean floor, she dragged every single living witness along with her, leaving behind absolutely nothing but an empty, oil-slicked expanse of water.
When the news of the San Miguel's sudden, mysterious disappearance reached the ears of Governor Don Rodrigues in Goa, the colonial administration was thrown into a state of absolute, paralyzed panic. The maritime insurance rates for European vessels in the Bay of Bengal skyrocketed overnight by over four hundred percent. Terrified of losing their entire commercial infrastructure to this invisible pirate menace, the Portuguese Crown was forced to abruptly suspend their aggressive diplomatic demands against Khurda. Instead of launching a sea blockade against maritime trade of the Khurda Kingdom, they frantically deployed their entire regional navy—comprising twelve elite war caravels and four heavy galleons—into the open ocean to hunt the ghosts of the Sandheads, completely playing into the young prince's hands.