Brokrin and Gotramm manoeuvred their aether-endrins to the back of the wreck. The hole Horgarr had made was large enough to admit a duardin, but not one wearing the bulky flying harness. Using their magnetic boots to secure themselves to the opening, the two explorers waited while they were unfastened from the aether-endrins. Horgarr and the endrinrigger would keep hold of the devices while Brokrin and Gotramm explored the wreck.
Looking at it from the outside, Brokrin found the opening into the wreck as dark and sinister as a dragon’s cave. There was, as Gotramm had observed, a nebulous sense of menace about the place. Compared to the unsettling feeling when he was unhooked from his aether-endrin with thousands of feet between himself and the canyon floor, this impression was even more foreboding. Try as he might, Brokrin could not keep the hair at the back of his neck from tingling. There was a cold and clammy feel to the air and a silence that made his heartbeats sound like thunder in his ears. If he had not already committed himself to this effort, he would have called the whole thing off. It was too late for that now. To back off at this point would mean losing face before his whole crew. Bad as his feeling was, it didn’t compare to that kind of disgrace.
A light showed from within the room Gotramm had entered. Brokrin followed the glow, at once impressed and unsettled by what it revealed. They were standing in a cabin – judging by the size and the corroded instruments fastened to the walls, either that of the ship’s captain or her navigator. The sextant and other tools were little more than calcified outlines against the thicker patina of decay that caked the walls. Little fingers of copper hung from the ceiling like metallic stalactites, drops of acid plopping down from them to splash against the uneven floor.
‘We will have to watch our footing,’ Brokrin warned Gotramm, gesturing with his own lamp to one of the dripping stalactites. ‘There is no knowing how compromised the integrity of the floor has become.’
‘Not a cheerful notion,’ Gotramm said. ‘Go crashing through rotten decks and straight to the bottom of the canyon.’ He glanced at Brokrin. ‘Want to call it over and head back?’
Brokrin shook his head and carefully approached the decayed desk that slouched in one corner. It was so choked by dust it resembled a mound of dirt, but by using his knife he was able to dig through the grime to the handful of objects sprawled across it. He found a logbook, its copper pages so decayed that they crumbled into metal flakes the instant he touched them. There was a crank-powered lantern of a design he had never seen before, but whatever power source had fed it must have gone bad and burst from its housing in a black sludge of acid. Then there was the ingot.
The ingot was heavy in Brokrin’s hand, much heavier than any metal he had ever handled. When he turned it around to stare at the side which he’d pried loose from the desk, he was stunned to see that there was a dark golden colour to it with just the faintest suggestion of a reddish overtone.
‘Deep gold,’ Brokrin muttered, his mind racing.
‘What was that, cap’n?’ Gotramm asked.
Brokrin held the ingot out to Gotramm. ‘I think this is deep gold. A rare ore the iron tyrants used to mine.’ He glanced around again at the decayed cabin. Just how long had this wreck been here? The iron tyrants died out during the Chaos invasions, taking the riddle of deep gold with them.
Gotramm hefted the ingot, impressed by its weight. ‘Exactly how valuable is this?’
‘To someone with any idea what they are doing, it is invaluable.’ Brokrin almost laughed. ‘Deep gold is the only ore strong enough to hold an edge. Tough enough that steel can’t even scratch it. Even a few ingots of that…’
Brokrin’s voice trailed off as excitement swept through him. Forgetting the perilous state of the floor, he hurried to the door. The portal was crusted over by corrosion, but opened readily enough when Brokrin put his shoulder to it. There was a sharp bang as the panel collapsed under his weight and crashed into the hallway beyond. Brokrin let his lamp play across the narrow corridor. The wreck might be old and of unfamiliar pattern, but there were certain rules of construction that the Kharadron never deviated from.
‘Cap’n, wait!’ Gotramm cried out. Brokrin could hear the privateer follow him out into the hall.
Brokrin did not wait for his companion, but instead hurried forwards. He could see the grisly mess of crumpled metal where the ship had dug herself into the cliff. It looked like the front third of the vessel must have been pushed back, twisted into a single snarl of wreckage. Just ahead of that tangled ruin, however, Brokrin could see a hatchway.
‘Get over here and help me!’ Brokrin ordered Gotramm as he started pulling at the cover. With the other duardin’s help, the hatch slowly came free of the corrosion that had cemented it to the deck.
‘Your light.’ Brokrin waved Gotramm to turn the rays of his lamp down into the hold. Combined with the rays of his own lantern, a big chamber stood revealed. The floor was a litter of smashed boxes and broken shelves. It was clear that the impact had tossed the contents of the hold around savagely. The corrosion and decay evident elsewhere was absent and the stale tang to the air that rose from the room made Brokrin wonder exactly how tightly it had been sealed away from the ravages of time.
Such questions quickly faded, however. By the light of the lamps, a litter of rectangular objects could be seen poking up from the debris. Each of the objects had a golden lustre and a faint reddish overtone.
‘Gotramm,’ Brokrin whispered. ‘We are rich.’
Brokrin could not take his eyes off the wreck. If he closed his eyes, the image of the hold filled with deep gold immediately filled his mind. Leaving it behind and letting Gotramm escort him back to the Iron Dragon was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done. To know a fortune was there, just waiting to be taken, was a torture even the most sadistic grot could never match.
Gotramm was right, of course. It would be too dangerous to try to extract the gold in the dark. A good night wind rolling off the hot sands of Droost could have aether-endrins smashing against the canyon walls. One misstep on the wreck’s rotten decks might cause the ship to break apart. Even Skaggi, greedy and impatient as he was, agreed that they needed to wait for daylight before proceeding.
Still, Brokrin would not feel content until the deep gold was safely aboard. That uncanny sense of menace continued to nag at him. Whatever was provoking that feeling, he wanted to be far away from it.
The telltale sound of Mortrimm walking the deck on his artificial leg announced the old navigator before he joined Brokrin at the rail. Mortrimm had the single ingot that had been found in the cabin.
‘Surprised you could pry that away from Skaggi,’ Brokrin told his friend.
‘There may have been some mention of what he owes me from knucklebones.’ Mortrimm winked. ‘Besides, if he held on to it any tighter he would have to marry the thing.’
Brokrin patted the ingot. ‘For once I do not blame Skaggi. This is going to solve a lot of problems. Like a gift from the gods.’
Mortrimm shook his head and gazed across the canyon to where the black shadow of the wreck could be seen jutting from the wall. ‘Our boon, but those poor beggars sure paid for it.’
‘We did not find any skeletons. It is possible they abandoned ship before she crashed.’ Brokrin found the suggestion hollow even as he said it. If it came down to a choice of saving his skin or leaving a cargo as valuable as the deep gold behind, he wondered if he could make that decision.
‘If they got away, they would have tried to find her again,’ Mortrimm said. He stared at the ingot. ‘This is the kind of dream you don’t easily leave behind. Even if they got off the ship, they would never have stopped trying to find her again.’
Brokrin felt a strange chill as he listened to Mortrimm talk. That uncanny feeling that had been dragging at him. Maybe it was nothing more than the dark of night feeding the gloom. He turned his eyes upwards as a silvery glow began to spread a
cross the cliffs. The moon, at least, would lessen the darkness. Perhaps put things in better perspective.
As he watched the silvery light creep down along the cliffs, Brokrin felt a sense of dread. It was unaccountable, but also undeniable. His eyes were drawn back to the wreck, held there as though by the petrifying gaze of a basilisk.
When he first spotted it, Brokrin refused to accept what he was seeing. A strange mirage was overcoming the wreck as the moonlight struck it. He could still see the darkened mass of the ship, but around it there was a translucent image, a phantasm that evoked the semblance of another ship. A ship that was whole and hale, not smashed against the cliff-face.
‘Mortrimm… do you… do you see?’
‘Aye, cap’n,’ Mortrimm gasped. ‘I see, even though I don’t want to.’
While he looked on, Brokrin observed figures moving around the decks. Transparent, as wispy as morning mist, they were yet distinct enough to make out the billowy, archaic pantaloons and jackets, the broad-brimmed helms and feather-festooned hats of a bygone age. They were duardin aeronauts, and Brokrin knew he gazed on the crew of the long-forgotten wreck.
‘They… they walked straight into the cliff,’ Mortrimm stammered, watching with disbelief as the ghostly duardin stepped into the solid wall. They did not vanish, however, for their spectral essence could be seen shining behind the stone.
‘That is where the rest of their ship lies,’ Brokrin said. His gaze narrowed as he saw a blast of ectoplasmic steam spill from the funnel along the side of the wreck’s hull. The implication was clear to him, as impossible as it seemed. ‘They’re firing up the engines. They’re making ready to sail!’
Mortrimm shook his head. ‘That can’t be. It has to be an illusion. A trick.’
That sense of dread pounding in his heart told Brokrin otherwise. ‘We have to get under way. They know we boarded their ship…’ Brokrin swung around. Cupping a hand to his mouth he bellowed to his first mate in the wheelhouse. ‘Vorki! Sound all hands! Everyone to his station!’ A moment later found Vorki repeating the captain’s commands over the ship’s loud-mouth array.
While the crew of the Iron Dragon quickly got the ship ready, Brokrin ordered every gun on board aimed towards the wreck. He joined Arrik and the hand-picked gunners manning the huge skyhook called Ghazul’s Bane. He didn’t know if it was possible to grapple a phantom, but if the ghostly wreck made any effort to confront the Iron Dragon, they would soon find out.
The ironclad’s crew watched anxiously as the spectres scurried about the deck of their phantom ship. A misty cloud now rolled away from the funnels alongside her hull. Gasps of awe rose from many of the duardin as the wreck suddenly pulled free from the canyon wall. All around the derelict was a translucent image, a wispy shell that conjured the dimensions of the Kharadron vessel as it had been before its crash ages ago. Instead of a single bulbous endrin to support her, a cluster of smaller, rounded spheres loomed above her decks, helmeted ghosts scurrying along cables strung between them.
‘All guns, stand ready!’ Brokrin called across the ironclad’s loud-mouth array. His words boomed across the ship, echoing through the corridors below deck.
‘Cap’n! You can’t fire on that vessel!’ Skaggi howled in protest. The sharp-faced logisticator went rushing towards the platform where Ghazul’s Bane was mounted. ‘Think of all the deep gold in her belly!’
Drumark intercepted the logisticator before he could climb up and confront Brokrin. ‘The cap’n knows what he is about,’ the sergeant said. ‘You can’t spend gold in a ghost’s gizzard.’ He tapped the barrel of his decksweeper and gave Skaggi a stern look. ‘Unless you have a mind to give it a try.’
His face almost apoplectic, Skaggi retreated below. Brokrin watched him slam the hatch shut after him, then returned his focus to the phantom ship. There could be no mistake about it now – the wreck had extricated itself from the cliff and, buoyed up by the spectral image that surrounded it, was now turning towards the Iron Dragon.
‘Fire!’ Brokrin shouted, the loud-mouth array carrying his command to every corner of the ship. An instant later, a fusillade of shots rang out. Aethershot carbines mounted in the hull crackled as their gunners opened up on the phantom. Drumark’s Grundstok thunderers aimed their rifles into the ghostly wreck and began blasting away. The booming discharge of an aethercannon sent an explosive blast crashing down on the deck of the spectral vessel.
Yet for all the fire trained on her, the phantom ship did not falter. The Kharadron could see splinters from the wreck buried in her guts go spinning away into the night, but the ghost itself remained intact, invulnerable to the havoc loosed against her.
‘Cap’n, do we turn Ghazul’s Bane against her?’ Arrik asked Brokrin. The gun team stood at their stations, ready to send the giant skyhook slamming into the ghost.
Brokrin shook his head. ‘If we can’t shoot her down I don’t think we can pull her down.’ He stared at the phantom, watching the ghostly duardin hurrying about her decks. He noted the silvery glow that infused them and considered that the explorers had gone unchallenged when they boarded the wreck. It had been the moonlight that had aroused the ghosts. Perhaps without the moon the spectral ship would return to being naught but a rotten wreck.
‘Vorki! Turn us about! All power to the engines!’ Brokrin climbed down from the gun platform and joined Horgarr beneath the Iron Dragon’s endrin. ‘We need to outrun her,’ he told the endrinmaster.
‘She’s an old hulk,’ Horgarr said. ‘The Iron Dragon could fly rings around her were all things fair.’ He gestured at the phantom ship as it drew away from the cliffs. ‘But you can’t expect reason to prevail against a ghost. It is more mist and shadow than steel and timber. How can you outrun something like that?’
‘We have to try,’ Brokrin insisted. ‘We just sent a broadside into her and it may as well have been spit for all the good it did us! But if we can keep ahead of her… stay clear of her until sunrise, we can make it.’
Horgarr scratched at his beard. ‘We could try a supremacy mine. Doubt it will take down a ghost, but it might slow it down some. Give us time to get clear.’
Brokrin clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Get the mine armed and over the side. She’s making straight for us, so it should be easy to lead her right into it.’
While Horgarr and a few of the crew hastened to get the powerful explosive ready, Brokrin’s attention was drawn to the activity on the ghost ship. The spectres were gathering around the prow, many of them hefting weird contraptions that looked part crossbow and part musket. Even as the Kharadron continued to fire at the phantom ship, the wraiths turned their own weapons on the Iron Dragon.
Wisps of silvery light shot out from the phantom ship as each duardin ghost shot at the ironclad. There was a tinny, faint echo that reached the ears of the Kharadron, like the distorted memory of gunfire. An instant later there was a sound of sharp impacts against the Iron Dragon’s hull. Long, spike-like missiles shivered against the sides of the ironclad, denting the armoured plates as they struck home. Before the stunned eyes of the crew, the silvery projectiles evaporated in a puff of mist. The holes they left behind, however, were all too real.
‘We can’t hurt them, but they damn sure can hurt us!’ Gotramm cursed as he aimed down the length of his pistol and tried to pick off one of the ghostly sharpshooters. The shot simply flashed through the phantasmal duardin, a bright glow amidst the silvery apparition.
‘Hold fast, lads!’ Brokrin barked. ‘Lose heart now and we are lost!’ He hoped he made the words more convincing to the crew than they were to him. Among the duardin, few things were as revered as their ancestors and nothing was more frightening than the thought of evoking their wrath. The ghost ship was the kind of thing designed to conjure a Kharadron’s childhood terrors.
Drumark stepped to the rail and turned his brutal decksweeper on the flying wreck. There was a deafening report as the we
apon unleashed every barrel into the vessel. The sergeant waved his gloved hand through the gunsmoke and peered at the ghost ship. ‘You can’t fight what you can’t hit!’ he snarled when he saw the phantom was unscathed.
Brokrin shouted to his duardin, his bellow so fierce he didn’t need the loud-mouth array to carry it to every corner of the ship. ‘What do you want to do? Give up? Roll over for these grave-cheating ghouls? Not me! However helpless it seems, I am going down fighting like a true son of Barak-Zilfin!’ He heard a few listless cries of support, but too many of his crew were staring at the ghosts. Whatever he said to them, it didn’t speak louder than the oncoming phantom.
‘Cap’n, the mine is ready!’ Horgarr called out. Brokrin swung around and gave the endrinmaster the signal to send the explosive over the side.
‘A supremacy mine, lads!’ Brokrin shouted to his crew. ‘That hulk might shrug off a bit of gunfire, but a mine is another thing!’
This time their captain’s words brought a little bit of hope rushing through the crew. They watched with eager anticipation as the supremacy mine went soaring away from the Iron Dragon. It hung in the air behind them as the ironclad flew onwards. The glowing beacon atop the mine glimmered at them from the dark night, a little ember of light between themselves and the glowing phantom.
‘All speed!’ Brokrin shouted to Vorki. ‘When that spook reaches the mine, we don’t want to be caught in the blast!’ The warning was given more to reassure and remind his crew of the potency of the weapon they had set in the phantom’s course than any genuine fear their own ship would be affected by the explosion. Yet as he watched the ghost taking on more speed, he wondered if it was such an idle concern. Their pursuer would be within range of the supremacy mine much quicker than he had anticipated.
‘More speed!’ Mortrimm added his voice to the calls to race ahead of the impending explosion.
All eyes watched as the silvery phantom sped towards the blinking beacon. The ancient vessel was oblivious to the threat that lay in its path, intent only on chasing after the Iron Dragon. Set to detonate when the enemy was only fifty yards from the mine, the Kharadron watched with baited breath as the ghosts rapidly closed the distance.
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