Her Old Colors

A Free Muster picket sloop lies shattered against the rock, her signal mast still flying the 'friend in sight' pennant. The Merrigale answered the recognition signals perfectly, flag for flag—and then opened fire at point-blank range.

Wedged beneath the wrecked helm clutching a canvas sea bag is a single survivor with a broken arm. "I'm Bevan Cray," he gasps. "I served as the Merrigale's first mate for nine years before she vanished into the Hush. I volunteered for this picket post just to watch for her return."

A Crown naval cutter that has been observing the wreck pulls alongside, and Lieutenant Lazlo Pym steps aboard carrying a leather case.

"The crew's families posted a bounty to sink the Merrigale," Pym says briskly, "but Crown Naval Intelligence will pay far more to capture her intact with her Hush-bound crew still breathing. Our Academy savants want to study how the gray fog keeps enthralled sailors manning their stations. We pay an advance upon signing and a bonus upon delivery." Beside you, Cray goes pale. "Captain, she still responds to her watch bell! Let me try waking them with the bell first."

Inside Pym's leather case rests an arm-length barbed harpoon head attached to a coil of gray grounding wire. "Fire this into her Drive housing to cripple her propulsion without sinking the hull." Beneath the harpoon lie forty hoods made of lead-lined glass, folded like napkins.

"The hoods are for the enthralled crew," Pym explains matter-of-factly. "They are useless to the Academy if they wake up—once awake, they remember what they've done and try to kill themselves." He holds out an advance purse awaiting your signature.

Using his good hand, Cray pulls a sweater-wrapped bronze bell the size of a bread loaf from his sea bag—its rim hand-carved with the name Merrigale.

"Every Muster ship carries two bells: the main watch bell, and this smaller one for the mess deck. Captain Thessaly Greer rang the watch changes herself for nine years. If she hears her own bell rung in the proper cadence at the change of the watch, I truly believe some part of her mind will wake up and come on deck."

Right on the hour Cray predicted, the Merrigale sails up her old patrol lane—a Free Muster brig flying red colors with her sails trimmed for inspection and her signal mast hoisting 'friend in sight.' Not a single sailor is visible along her rail, and a mile astern, a pale Hollow vessel shadows her wake without any flag at all.

Gripping your rail with his good hand, Cray whispers, "That's Captain Greer at the wheel—I'd know the way she holds a course anywhere."

Boarding the crippled Merrigale, your crew find every single sailor standing motionless at their battle stations. No one resists or even looks up: a gunner mechanically sponges out a cannon that has already been blasted off its carriage, while at the wheel, Captain Thessaly Greer quietly repeats the order to come about over and over.

When Bevan Cray steps right in front of her, she stares straight through him.

Lieutenant Pym boards the Merrigale with a squad of Crown marines carrying the forty lead-glass hoods, gently slipping them over the heads of the unresisting sailors one by one.

"The Academy thanks you for this priceless specimen, Captain," Pym says, offering you a purse even heavier than the promised payout. But when he steps toward the wheel with the final hood, Bevan Cray blocks his path with the bronze bell raised in his hand.

Cray strikes eight bells in the exact cadence Captain Greer used for nine years. At the wheel, the broad-shouldered woman freezes, and her hand rises slowly to her face.

"Mr. Cray... you're late for the watch," she whispers—before seeing the state of her deck and dropping to her knees. Around her, half her crew are waking from the Hush's grip. Sitting on her scarred deck planking, Thessaly Greer counts her surviving sailors twice. "I remember everything we did while the fog had us, Captain. What does your bounty poster demand?"