Featured in The Copper Press, 27 February, 2158 A.M.

They say the Sea of Ghosts never sleeps. Its waves claw ice from shattered bergs and hurl it skyward on updrafts so cold they ring like chimes against an airship’s hull. Perfect hunting ground for a privateer who isn’t afraid of frost or phantoms.

I am Captain Rhys “Red Jack” Malloran, late of the Free Cutter *Blissful Malady*. Dawn found us three hundred spans above the berg-strewn channel between East America and Atlantis, chasing a fat Viroc ore-runner called *Virtue’s Profit*. She carried refined Shardisite—enough to buy my crew wages twice over.

Dogfights in thin air feel more like knife duels than naval battles. You close fast, trade broadside grapeshot, then lash hulls together for boarding. My Malady was smaller, nimbler, and my gunnery chief—old Glynn Caul—could thread cannonballs through a chimney flue. Within minutes we shaved *Profit’s* envelope, venting lifting gas in a gout of gold vapor. She could either jettison cargo or sink into brine. Her captain chose the former. Crates splintered across cloudtops like confetti.

Victory, however, arrived wedded to ruin. The ore-runner’s last shot wasn’t at our envelope but at our starboard crew rail—where Glynn stood roping a boarding line. One shell took his head and half the deck watch. Another ripped the ballonet feed, venting *our* gas.

We still won—*Profit* spiraled down in flames—but the Malady staggered wounded. Shrapnel had stitched the crew. By the time we cut free, only three hands besides me remained alive—and two bled out before nightfall.

The Sea of Ghosts rewards hubris with isolation. Clouds here are so dense with frozen spray they muffle engine roar. After the smoke cleared I could hear my own heartbeat ticking like a metronome inside my ears.

Damage report: Elevation cell torn; fuel tanks holed; wind vane sheared clean. Food stores soaked in propellant. Fresh water down to half a keg. Crew: one. Myself.

I set bones in splints—my left arm hung useless from socket—but adrenaline dulls pain. I patched the gas cell with canvas tar and candle wax. Enough to hold altitude at reduced lift. Still, the compass spun madly—Shard storms below scramble magnetics like a drunk shuffles cards. Without dead-reckoning stars, I could drift halfway to Lemuria.

Twice I thought I glimpsed other hulls through cloud breaks—pale silhouettes trailing corpse-light. Salvagers, perhaps, or the rumored Glacier Wights that tether derelicts for scrap. My signal lamps were smashed, and firing a gun would only invite predators.

Three days the wind carried me westward—at least by sun-arc guess. Rations dwindled to hardtack crumbs. I boiled wood shavings into broth, chased it with melted hailstones. Sleep came fitful, haunted by hammering sounds below deck. When I investigated, nothing but cargo chains creaking. Yet each night the hammering grew louder, until I recognized the rhythm: Glynn Caul’s old cadence for loading shot. Dead men keeping watch.

Shardisite dust from burst crates coated every railing in green frost. Breathing it seeds visions—so scholars claim. I scoffed at such tales, until moonrise of the fifth night when the Malady’s wheel spun without my touch. It lined the ship toward a tear in the clouds, revealing black water below threaded by bioluminescent veins. In that glow floated fragments of my fallen enemy’s cargo: Shard-crystals bobbing like lanterns on the swell, singing just beyond hearing.

A man adrift with no crew begins bargaining with delirium. I considered diving—open ballast valves, spiral down, fetch the crystals. Their power might refill lifting cells. Or burst them. Or burst me. I lashed the wheel down and crawled away.

Storm clouds bruised the horizon purple. Inside the squall flickered witch-fire—the kind that crawls over metal and sets hair on edge before frying nerves. No ballast or rudder could turn the Malady in time. I secured every stray rope, doused lanterns, strapped myself to the helm post.

The squall hit like a titan’s exhale. Sheets of horizontal hail blasted canvas. Static arcs danced over brass fixtures, illuminating the deck in strobing emerald. In each flash I saw crewmen where none lived: Glynn loading port cannon; Quartermaster Sull patching sails; young Mira at the lookout nest singing shanties. They looked at me accusatory—Why am I dead?—then vanished when darkness returned.

Lightning struck the fore-mast, splintering it into a flaming javelin that toppled overboard. The sudden loss of forward rigging yawed the hull; I slammed into helm spokes, snapping two ribs. Pain flared white hot, but the ship steadied on a lingering updraft—dead calm inside the storm’s eye.

There, silence reigned so complete I could hear sleet hiss on my eyelashes. Ahead lay something impossible: an iceberg fortress adrift on cloud, lifted by Shard vapors venting from fissures. Spires of sapphire ice reflected starlight that should have been hidden by storm. Anchored to its flank: a skeletal barque riddled with hole-eaten sails—an older casualty of these skies. Refuge or grave?

Proximity gauges warned the Malady would tumble if I tried to moor against that berg. But supplies were gone, wounds festered, and the boiler hissed empty. I spooled anchor chains and drifted closer until metal scraped ice. Then I leapt.

Cold bit through boots like knives. I hauled a tether line, cinched it around an ice spire, and prayed the hull wouldn’t sheer away. The berg’s surface was riddled with tunnels—warm air drifted from them, scented faintly of salt and ozone. I followed the largest passage downward, revolver drawn.

Inside, blue corridors opened into a cavern lit by Shard crystals bigger than church bells. In their glow lay skeletons in merchant coats—crew of the derelict. Some knelt in prayer posture before a single giant crystal at chamber center. On its face was carved a sigil unknown to me—half-angelic, half-mathematical. Beneath it lay a booklet waterproofed in wax. The script was Murmansk trader-cant, but one phrase repeated: CORE AT 78% CHORUS. NEED ONE MORE VOICE.

A choir stone. Raw Shard honed to channel thought into lift. The dead must have tried to sing themselves skyward and failed. My throat, cracked from thirst, felt suddenly too narrow. If I could tune that crystal, bleed a scrap of melody, maybe I could refill the Malady’s cells and steer home.

But the walls whispered. Each shadow gnawed at corners of sight. I knew this was the cusp where ambition becomes tomb. Still—I was already a ghost if I stayed adrift.

I tore canvas from my coat to fashion a crude sling for ribs, steadied breath, and stepped to the crystal. Its surface thrummed against my palm, mapping heartbeats. I matched tempo, hummed a shanty Glynn once swore brought fair winds. Notes resonated, climbed until air shivered. Ice shards trembled loose from ceiling, tinkling like bells.

Light bloomed inside the crystal—first emerald, then gold. It spilled over skeletons, coating them in quicksilver that twitched. Their jaws opened, joining harmony. A chorus of bone and ice around a lone living throat.

I should have stopped. Instead I reached for crescendo. Pain vanished; cold turned warm. I felt the Malady above deck, cells swelling, seams groaning as lift flooded in. The ship rose, snatching anchor free. Line whipped taut, yanking my shoulder—but I kept singing.

The berg lurched, pulled upward by same force now. Cracks spidered through ice pillars. Skeletons crumbled, voices dropping out, leaving me solo in a song too large. Pitch warped; crystal flashed scarlet—warning.

I cut the tether. The line hissed skyward as Malady cleared the berg. Without external focus, the crystal stuttered, then exploded in shards of green fire. Shockwave tossed me onto slope of ice. I slid, bounced off ridge, and tumbled into freefall.

Wind tore screams from my lungs until a canvas shape swept under—my own ship, dragged by loose anchor chain snagged on my boot. The Malady caught me like a mother catching a wayward child—rough, but alive. I hauled myself over rail with last of strength.

Dawn stained clouds rose. The Malady floated steady, cells humming with fresh lift. Fuel gauge still read empty, but the Shard chorus carried me regardless—singing faintly from the patched envelope. I lashed the wheel toward east, chasing the spark of Europa’s trade lane.

Days blurred. I drank melted hail, ate leather belts boiled soft, and talked to ghosts until their answers sounded like my own thoughts. On the twelfth sunrise a patrol frigate spotted my drifting hulk and took me aboard. Doctors say fever kept me rambling for a week about ice choirs and skeleton singers.

They found no crew, no salvage crystal—only an airship hull light as a cloud, its lifting gas infused with something they could not measure. The Malady rests now in a drydock, too dangerous to dissect, too wondrous to scrap.

As for me—they call me the Ghost Captain. Some nights I wake to the sound of hammering shot, of Mira singing aloft. The Sea of Ghosts took my crew, but left their echo inside my bones. I carry them like ballast—and I will fly again.

Because the horizon is a debt that must be paid, and skyfarers like me pay in madness, miracles, and the memory of those who sang our ships home.