The Officer Who Sold the Line

A Crown beacon-ship drifts silently where the chart says a containment lamp should be burning. Her great ward-lamp is cold, and the gray fog of the Hush laps right up against her hull rail like rising water.

Four survivors huddle on the foredeck wrapped in heavy canvas, while the ship's lamp-log remains chained to the bridge desk. Out in the gray mist, a pale shape is circling back to finish off the vessel.

A Free Muster brig sails down the beacon line and hoves to off your quarter. Her captain—a lean, gray-haired forty-year-old named Nerys Kettering—hails you across the gap.

"The Crown wants Brask brought back alive so a show trial can calm the fleet. I lost two Muster ships during his traitorous blackouts, and I want him dead. His paymaster runs the fuel anchorage astern of us, while Brask's own flagship sailed straight into the Hush an hour ago with every lamp blazing. I'm hunting his flagship right now—fly with me or stay out of my way."

The fuel anchorage consists of a ring of crystal barges moored around a small tin office, where Paymaster Benet Tull clutches an account book tightly against his chest.

"He didn't sell the line for silver," Tull blurts out before you even ask, opening the book before you. Beside every scheduled blackout hour is a list of names, crossed off one by one. "Those are the lost crewmen of the Lark Aloft—the ship where Brask's own daughter served as first officer. For every hour he darkens a beacon, the Hush releases a few of her crew alive."

Deep inside the Hush, the wake of Brask's flagship forms a narrow corridor of clear air that is slowly closing behind her. Ahead of you, Kettering's brig races down the lane with every lantern blazing—until a Crown picket cutter looms across the passage with her gun ports open.

"Halt by order of Commander Brask!" her young lieutenant hails. "No vessel passes this point!" Kettering doesn't even slacken sail.

Commander Brask's frigate, the Vigilance, rides at the buoy inside a glowing dome of clear air created by dozens of blazing ward-lamps. Lashed directly alongside her hull is a pale Hollow tender. One by one, dazed, gray-faced sailors are being helped up the ladder onto the frigate's deck like sleepwalkers while a tall officer counts each survivor aboard.

Brask has spotted your ship, yet he makes no move to flee.

Commander Brask sits quietly in your brig with his hands resting on his knees. Out in the illuminated lane, both Captain Kettering's Muster brig and the Crown Provost Marshal's prisoner transport have caught up with you.

"Your Crown warrant demands him alive," Kettering calls across the water, "but if you hand him over to my ship instead, the Free Muster will pay you a handsome bounty—and no one ever needs to know which of us pulled the trigger."

Sixty years old and hollow-eyed from sleeplessness, Commander Brask climbs aboard your deck holding his uniform hat in his hands.

"Forty of my sailors—including my own daughter—are still aboard that Hollow tender's mothership. She arrives at this buoy within the hour to collect her final payment: four more darkened beacons. I have no intention of paying. Once the last of my people climbs aboard the Vigilance, help me sink that Hollow mothership—and I swear on my honor I will walk into your brig voluntarily."

The gray fog has retreated. Across on the Vigilance's deck, forty rescued sailors sit wrapped in blankets, slowly remembering their own names—including a young first officer with Brask's jawline who cradles a hot mug in both hands.

Keeping his word, Commander Brask rows back to your ship and holds out his wrists for your irons. "I made a promise, Captain. The beacon crews who died in my blackouts had daughters too." Down the lane, the Crown Provost Marshal's transport is approaching to take custody.