Old Greyback

Three wrecked ore barges lie torn open on the rock slope below Pit Nine. Above them, a cliffside chute pours glittering gray runoff down the rock face. Old Greyback is feeding at the bottom—a dock-length crystal leviathan grinding its jaws against the stone.

A harpoon brig, the Long Patience, is circling upwind. Her lookouts have spotted you too.

The keg-sized heart-crystal rests in a cargo sling on your deck, humming in resonance with your ship's Drive. The Greywater Company will pay the full bounty for it at port—but as your engineer points out, the crystal itself holds enough raw power to fuel your ship for an entire season.

Oskar's plan is straightforward: his brig will harpoon the beast and hold it on tether lines while your ship moves in close to shatter the crystal hide over its heart. "It'll lunge at whoever hits it hardest," he calls across. "That means you."

At dawn, the night shift comes off duty. The foreman, an Ursine woman named Dagna Greaves, walks out along the pier toward your ship. "You're here for the beast. It never touched a barge until the Company started dumping raw crystal runoff off the cliff at night to dodge refinery fees. They ring the dinner bell every night and then put a bounty on the guest." She spits over the rail. "Block that chute and it'll go back down to the deep seams."

The Greywater cashier weighs the heart-crystal twice on his heavy scale. "Three ore barges lost," he says. "The directors will be relieved." Behind his desk hangs a wall chart of Pit Nine showing the cliffside runoff chute—stamped with the warning: NIGHT DUMPING ONLY.

The heart-crystal is too large for a standard fuel jar and too volatile to leave hanging in a sling. Your crew gather around it with a saw and a copper funnel. Left whole in a custom cradle, it can continuously trickle-feed your Drive. Cut into pieces, it will fill every fuel jar aboard and leave prime facets to sell.

Greyback lies dead across the tailings slope. Before the dust settles, Oskar winches the warm, keg-sized heart-crystal onto his own deck. "My harpoons held it," he calls across, his crew still hefting their irons despite the gashes in his hull. "Seventy percent for me, thirty for you, and I turn it in to the Company."

The Company notices the blocked chute before noon. An armed mine-guard cutter drops down the cliff face with her gun ports open. A clerk at her rail reads out charges of sabotage and trespassing, demanding the names of the night-shift miners. Greaves's crew stand firm along the pier with their picks and refuse to give a single name.

After three nights without runoff, Old Greyback stops rising to the cliff. On the fourth morning, your lookout spots its long gray silhouette sinking deep into the clouds toward the lower seams. The Company's bounty goes unclaimed, but the grateful night-shift miners come out to the pier with a reward of their own.