Featured in The Wandering Ledger, 12 April, 2160 A.M.

Barnabus “Barnaby” Harrier kept three items beneath the binnacle of the newly christened *Sable Kite*.

The first was a silver locket containing a miniature of Miranda Frostbead—blue-tinted hair pinned back, eyes bright with the mischief that once matched his own. The second was a single cog broken from the *Wind’s Revenge* during the crash that murdered his crew. The third, added only a fortnight ago, was a stained ledger page bearing the sigil of House Galaviz Aeroworks—a Cordoban subcontractor he believed responsible for the mysterious “friendly-fire” order that had diverted a garrison battery and doomed Miranda.

These were compass, chronometer, and scripture on a voyage of vengeance that had already carried him from the shattered piers of Savannah to the smuggler lofts outside Atlantis. Tonight it carried him westward, racing the purple storms that brewed where East America’s humidity collided with Shard-spiked winds off the Arctican Sea.

Harrier’s tip came from a limping mail-packet whose captain owed him two broken ribs’ worth of debt. The packet carried sealed manifests for a covert House Galaviz drop on Port Allegra—a coral-gnawed speck off the Cordoban coast, notable only for black-market refuelers and the algae that glowed emerald under moonlight.

If the shooters who’d destroyed *Wind’s Revenge* answered to Galaviz, their paychests might be routed through an out-of-the-way airstrip like Allegra. And if Harrier seized those chests, he’d buy both information and justice.

Dawn saw the *Sable Kite* hovering in the thermals above the cay. Barnaby’s new crew—half ex-navy deserters, half starry-eyed freelancers—still lacked Miranda’s precise synergy, but they followed orders.

“Silent drop, five-minute grab, no heroics,” he said, eye patching a split line on his maps.

They tethered on a sea-stack, rappelled, and ghosted through palm shadows toward the rickety hangar. Inside waited two double-rotor freighters disgorging crates marked with Galaviz’s entwined-gear monogram. Guards in smart Cordoban greys smoked clove wrappers and wagered at Liar’s Dice.

Barnaby had prided himself on two skills: pistol speed and poker face. Tonight he needed the latter. Disguised as a freelance quartermaster, he strode into the lamplight brandishing forged bills of lading. His accent—part Lemurian gutter, part West American drawl—sold the ruse long enough to get him within arm’s reach of the paychest.

Then fate showed her teeth. One guard recognized the swaggering gait from a bounty poster in Panama.

“Harrier?” the man muttered—obvious recognition on his face.

No time for introductions. Harrier smashed the dice table with the paychest lid, sending ivory cubes and Cordoban sol coins skittering. Pistols barked. His crew stormed windows, rifles coughing smoke. Lamp oil ignited, bathing the hangar in amber flame—the same hue as Miranda’s memorial locket.

They escaped with little more than a ledger book and two bullet wounds—one in Harrier’s left thigh, one nicking the new navigator’s ear. Yet the ledger delivered gold finer than coin: routing codes pointing to a high-altitude relay depot on the Caribbean coast of Atlantis.

The Atlantean coast guards Caribbean sea lanes where raw crystal dust is whipped into electric vortices. Ships risk the straits only when profits outweigh probability of hull-shear and crew mutations. House Galaviz clearly found that balance.

Barnaby charted a course that would skirt the worst turbulence by riding a northbound thermal elevator at dusk. The *Sable Kite* skimmed stormcaps while arcs of viridian lightning danced in the cloud gulches below.

As they approached the relay platform—a skeletal iron mesa floating on ballooned hydrogas sacs—tiny turrets spat tracer rounds. These weren’t bored freight guards; they were contracted Shard Wardens, zealots who believed meteor crystals were divine marrow not to be bled for commerce. Perfect, Barnaby thought; zealots rarely keep balanced books.

He hailed the platform under white flag, claiming engine failure. Two Warden skiffs latched on, dragging *Sable Kite* into a docking cradle funereal in silence. Barnaby, limping but grinning, met their abbot—Father Obregon—under the crackle of static discharge nets.

Through feigned contrition and a hidden flask of Lemurian rum, Barnaby learned what he came for: months earlier, a Cordoban “special-operations dirigible” had delivered both coin and sealed caskets to the Wardens. Payment for hush-hush disposal of battlefield evidence. One casket bore Miranda’s unit seal—proof that Galaviz had contracted black-ops artillery, likely the same unit whose misfire had destroyed *Wind’s Revenge*.

Harrier offered Father Obregon a trade: the ledger codes in exchange for the casket. Obregon considered—then declined.

“Truth sleeps sealed,” the zealot intoned.

Barnaby responded with lead and powder.

A running gunfight raged through maintenance gantries. The Warden skiffs powered up engines but Barnaby’s quartermaster sabotaged fuel feeds with a hurled arcane flare. The explosion painted the sky emerald.

Barnaby reached the storage vault just as Obregon leveled a relic musket. Shot met shot; both men fell. Harrier’s thigh wound reopened, hot blood spattering the iron deck. But the abbot lay dying, chest cored. Barnaby dragged the sealed casket—heavy, cold—back to a winch line and signalled for retrieval.

Aloft once more, crew laid Harrier beside the casket. He forced the lock with Miranda’s hairpin—a keepsake, now key. Inside rested not a corpse but a brass-bound recorder globe. When wound, it projected hololithic images: Miranda’s last mission brief, Galaviz officers ordering the clandestine raid, coordinates that marked the firing position responsible for *Wind’s Revenge’s* demise.

Rage warred with relief; evidence in hand, vengeance sharpened. Yet the recording ended with a datum colder than altitude wind: the fire order had been mis-routed from a mercenary encryption node operating in Petrolina—the very city where Barnaby had once fought alongside “friends.”

He issued new orders: chart a course for Lemuria to recruit old allies, cash bounties, and plan the final strike on the Galaviz headquarters.

The *Sable Kite* angled east, engines straining against storm shear. Barnaby braced on the deck rail, locket in palm, recorder globe secured below. Lightning flashed across cloud anvils, illuminating the privateer’s scarred face and iron eyes.

His quest had yielded names to carve on bullets but hadn’t eased the grave-cold ache where laughter once lived. Ahead lay more storms, perhaps redemption—or a pyre blazing high enough for Miranda to see from whatever sky angels chart.

I close this ledger here; the rest remains for another wind and another tale. If this report drifts into your hands, know that Captain Barnaby Harrier still flies—pursued by guilt, propelled by love, and hunted by the truth he hasn’t yet faced.