The silence on the flight deck of the Rusty Pelican was heavier than the gold in the cargo hold.
Outside, the clouds were thickening, turning from grey to a bruised purple as night fell. The ship was running "dark"—navigation lights off, engines throttled down to a whisper, radio silence enforced.
But everyone knew it was a lie.
In the engine room, Skid was sweating over a console that looked like a Christmas tree having a seizure.
"I can't kill it," she hissed, typing furiously on a mirrored keyboard. "The signal from the mask isn't radio. It's... quantum entanglement or something. It's cutting right through my jamming field."
Julian stood behind her, watching the waveform on the screen. It was a perfect, flat line.
"It's a heartbeat," Julian murmured. "It's telling them exactly where the pulse is."
He looked at Lyra, who was sharpening her knife by the door.
"We have to take it from him," Julian said.
"Mutiny?" Lyra raised an eyebrow. "On a pirate ship? That usually ends with a walk off a short plank."
"If we don't toss that mask overboard," Skid said, not looking up, "we won't have a plank to walk on. The Silence doesn't take prisoners, Julian. They erase zip codes."
The Captain's Quarters
Captain Blitz sat at his mahogany desk, the silver mask resting on a velvet pillow in front of him. He stared at it with his good eye, swirling a glass of brandy.
"Beautiful," he whispered. "With the money from this, I could buy a moon."
BANG.
The door to his quarters flew open.
It wasn't Julian. It was Silas, the quartermaster with the iron hook for a hand. Behind him stood half the crew—men and women with grease-stained faces and weapons drawn.
"We're dumping the cargo, Cap'n," Silas growled, his hook glinting in the lamplight.
Blitz set his glass down slowly. He didn't look surprised. He looked disappointed.
"Silas," Blitz sighed. "My oldest friend. You'd throw away a fortune because of a ghost story?"
"It ain't a story!" a crew member shouted. "They wiped out Sector 9 last month! Silent death! We signed up for loot, not suicide!"
"I am the Captain!" Blitz roared, standing up. His hand hovered over his flintlock. "And the Captain decides what is cargo and what is trash!"
"Then you ain't the Captain anymore," Silas stepped forward.
Blitz smiled. A cold, metallic smile.
He pressed a button under his desk.
CLICK-WHIRR.
From the ceiling of the cabin, two automated turret-guns dropped down. They swiveled instantly, locking onto the mutineers.
"I expected loyalty," Blitz sneered, his red cybernetic eye glowing. "But I prepared for stupidity. Anyone else want to file a complaint?"
The crew froze. Silas lowered his hook, cursing under his breath.
"Good," Blitz sat back down. "Now get back to your stations. If I see one of you near the cargo hold, the turrets won't be set to stun."
The Flight Deck
Julian and Lyra watched the crew file out of the hallway, defeated and angry.
"He's insane," Lyra whispered. "He's going to get us all killed."
"He's scared," Julian corrected. "He thinks the money will protect him. He doesn't understand what's coming."
Suddenly, Julian grabbed the railing. He gasped, clutching his chest.
The Black-Iron ring on his finger was vibrating. Not with power, but with absence.
"Julian?" Skid looked at him.
"Cut the engines," Julian whispered.
"What?"
"CUT THEM!" Julian roared.
Skid slammed the emergency kill switch. The propellers stopped. The ship drifted into silence, carried only by the wind.
"Why did we stop?" Lyra hissed, drawing her gun.
"Listen," Julian said, pointing up.
"I don't hear anything."
"Exactly."
The wind had stopped howling. The creaking of the ship's hull had ceased. The clouds above them weren't moving.
It was the Dampening Field.
From the clouds directly above the Rusty Pelican, three shapes descended.
They weren't ships. They were Drop-Pods. Sleek, coffin-shaped slivers of silver metal, falling without sound, without thrusters.
They slammed into the deck of the pirate ship.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The impact didn't make a noise. The wood splintered silently.
"Contact!" Lyra screamed, but her voice was muffled, sounding like she was shouting from inside a box.
The pods hissed open.
From each pod emerged a Silence Sentinel. They were taller than the ones in the Dregs. Their armor was polished chrome. Their masks were featureless mirrors. And they didn't carry damping rods.
They carried Sonic Blades—swords that vibrated at such a high frequency they were invisible to the naked eye, appearing only as a blur of distorted air.
"Fire!" Silas screamed from the mid-deck.
The pirates opened fire. Bullets flew.
The Sentinels didn't dodge. They simply walked forward. As the bullets entered their personal dampening fields, the kinetic energy was leached away. The lead slugs dropped harmlessly to the deck, flattened like coins.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
The lead Sentinel raised its invisible sword. It slashed at a pirate charging with an axe.
There was no sound of cutting. The pirate's axe—and the pirate—were simply bisected. He fell in two pieces, the wound cauterized instantly by the friction.
"They're immune to ballistics!" Lyra yelled, grabbing Julian. "We need Resonance!"
"I can't!" Julian shouted back, his voice strained against the dampening field. "If I take off the ring, they'll target me instantly! They feed on the noise!"
"If you don't, we die anyway!"
On the upper deck, Blitz burst out of his quarters, the silver mask tucked under his arm, his pistol drawn.
"Get off my ship!" Blitz screamed, firing at the Sentinels.
The Sentinels turned their mirror faces toward the Captain. Or rather, toward the mask he was holding.
Target Acquired.
The three Sentinels moved in unison. They blurred.
They tore through the pirate crew like a scythe through wheat. It wasn't a fight; it was an extermination. Silas tried to block with his hook; the hook shattered into dust.
Blitz backed up against the wheel, terror finally piercing his greed.
"Julian!" Blitz screamed, looking down at the lower deck. "Do the magic thing! Kill them!"
Julian looked at the slaughter. He looked at Lyra. He looked at the ring.
He realized the irony. The Silence absorbed sound. They absorbed kinetic energy. But they had a limit. He had overloaded them before with a turbine.
Now, he didn't have a turbine.
But he had a storm.
Julian looked up at the purple clouds. They were heavy with static charge. Thunderclouds.
"Skid!" Julian yelled. "The lightning rod! extend it!"
"Are you crazy?" Skid shouted from the hatch. "We'll get struck!"
"DO IT!"
Skid pulled the lever. A long copper spire extended from the mast of the Rusty Pelican, piercing the cloud layer above.
Julian grabbed the base of the mast. He ripped the Black-Iron ring off his finger.
He didn't scream at the metal. He screamed at the sky.
COME DOWN.
He became a beacon. Not for the Silence, but for the storm. He channeled his Resonance up the mast, creating a massive ionization channel.
The sky answered.
A bolt of lightning, thick as a tree trunk, struck the mast.
It traveled down the copper, through Julian (who acted as the conduit), and he pushed it outward—not as electricity, but as a Sonic Boom.
KRA-KOOOOOOM!
The thunderclap was deafening. It was nature's own artillery.
The dampening fields of the Sentinels shattered instantly. The mirrors on their faces cracked. The sonic blades flickered and died.
The pirates, the crew, and Julian were thrown flat by the shockwave.
But the Sentinels were stunned. Their systems were rebooting.
"Now!" Lyra yelled, leaping over the railing. She didn't shoot. She kicked the lead Sentinel in the chest, knocking it off the side of the ship into the abyss.
"Overboard!" Julian shouted to the crew. "Push them off!"
The surviving pirates rallied. They tackled the disoriented Sentinels, heaving them over the railings before they could recover.
The flight deck was clear. But the ship was on fire. The lightning strike had fried the electronics.
And Captain Blitz was gone.
Julian looked up to the helm. The wheel was spinning freely. The Captain's coat lay on the deck.
"Where is he?" Julian gasped, putting his ring back on, his hand shaking uncontrollably.
Lyra pointed off the starboard bow.
A small escape pod was rocketing away from the burning ship. Inside the glass cockpit, they saw Blitz, clutching the silver mask, abandoning his crew and his ship to the flames.
"He took the only pod," Skid whispered, staring at the retreating exhaust trail. "The bastard left us to burn."
Julian looked at the fire spreading toward the fuel tanks. He looked at the dark clouds where more Drop-Pods were likely waiting.
"We have to crash," Julian said grimly.
"What?" Skid looked at him.
"We can't fly," Julian pointed to the shredded balloon. "We have to bring her down. Controlled crash. Before the fuel goes up."
"Controlled?" Skid laughed hysterically. "Into what? The mountains?"
"Into the fog," Julian said, looking down at the cloud layer below. "Brace for impact."