“Oh, I don't disagree with the decision. I just don't like the fact that we've been put in this kind of situation.”
Despite the potential the blueprints had brought to them, their position remained precarious. The Iron Guild still had its reach and its will to dominate this world. They would do well to remember that fact.
For now, they had to focus on their own objectives.
Chapter Thirteen
The ship reached Dux without further incident. Kelvin moved topside as Shane motored into the harbor and helped Jamie and Brandon tie the vessel up to the dock once they were in place.
Everyone had their masks on. There was no reason not to, since they'd be staying in the city's safe zones, and they didn't want to tip off the guild. His group could hide their affiliation without their masks, but there was always the potential that a sharp-eyed observer could identify their faces.
And besides, they only be dealing with the NPC clockwork drones in the exchange.
“Well then, let's get to the markets, buy our stuff and then get it loaded,” Shane said. “We should be able to get it back to Beylan within a few hours, and with the markets as busy as they are we'll have our money in no time.”
“Makes having a ship that goes this fast pretty nice,” Kelvin said. “Even if it does go through coal really quickly. Speaking of which, do we need to take on some more so we don't run out?”
“We're fine,” Bailey said. “More than half of both hoppers, and if it gets tight we can always just stop using one of them. But I don't think that's going to be a problem.”
“Good enough. Saves us a lot of trouble with having to ration our coin,” he said. “Now if...”
Kelvin's voice drifted off as he saw Brandon looking intently toward the mouth of Dux port. He turned around and saw a ship steaming into the bay, badly damaged, by the look of it. Part of the funnel had been shot away, and the deck showed plenty of scars.
“Huh, they did make it,” he heard Brandon say. “How about that?”
“That the ship from earlier?” Kelvin asked.
“That's the one.”
The vessel steamed toward an empty berth near their own ship, but he noticed there was no one on deck. That was unusual, Kelvin thought, because they needed a helmsman to put them in the right spot, and at least one crew member to tie the ship up to the docks. Without it the ship would likely start to drift away from its berth while the helmsman moved away from the wheel.
As suspected, the vessel moved toward the dock. Kelvin winced as it hit the dock with an audible crunch, though it seemed to suffer no serious damage. The engines slowed, but the ship began to drift away from the dock. For a minute the vessel began to seesaw between nearing the dock and drifting away into the open harbor.
“They must not have enough crew members,” Shane said. “I-”
Bailey shoved past them both. “OK, I can't watch this anymore. Come on.”
She moved to the berth and leaped onto the deck, then moved toward one of the mooring ropes. Kelvin hesitated for a moment, then followed her. He almost tripped over a large tube bolted to the deck, but he steadied himself and regained his balance.
“I'll take stern,” he said.
Shane jumped aboard, and Jamie and Brandon took up positions on the dock.
“I'll see if I can give some help to the helmsman,” Shane said as he stepped through the pilothouse door. A few moments later the ship began to pull back toward the dock again, but this time the movement was far smoother. Shane must have taken complete control of the wheel.
“Coming over,” Kelvin said, tossing his rope to Brandon. Within a minute they had the ship tied up in the berth and stabilized. He heard the engines slow and then die away completely.
“Well that was fun,” Bailey said.
“This ship was being attacked by the guild,” Jamie said. “Was helping them really a good idea?
“All the more reason to help them. And what are they going to do to us?” she said. “We have our masks on, they can't identify the ship, and we're in a safe zone. And I don't see any of them watching.”
“They're always watching. And this might make them take notice of us. They'll probably be angry enough to give chase.”
Bailey shrugged. “Let them. We can outrun them.”
“Unless they call in reinforcements.”
“Look, I'm all for taking precautions, but if we're going to act terrified of the Iron Guild all the time what's the point of even trying to play? They're not invincible.”
The conversation stopped as the pilothouse door swung open and Shane stepped out, followed by another player. He had a short, slim build and brown hair.
“Thank you for the help,” he said, shuffling his feet awkwardly. “I was really making a mess of it.”
“Like I told you, it's no problem,” Shane said.
Kelvin nodded and spoke up. “I didn't get you name?”
“It's Ryan,” he said. “And I won't ask you for yours. I know you want to keep that quiet. But thank you again for helping me.”
“What happen to the rest of your crew?” Brandon said. “Did the Iron Guild kill them all?”
Ryan shuffled again. “Um, yes. That's what happened. We were out trawling for fish when the enemy ship attacked us without warning.”
Kelvin frowned. “Without warning, huh? Did you do something to make them angry?”
“I don't think so. We were just minding their own business.”
He nodded. It was probably raiders, then, crews that flew the Iron Guild's flag but were only nominally affiliated with the group. They were little more than pirates, constantly preying on other ships, though they were supposedly under guild control. Occasionally the Iron Guild would intervene to try and control them, but Kelvin was fairly sure the only did it for publicly's sake. Outside of those times they seemed to be fine with the actions of the raiders, likely because it intimidated other crews.
“Raiders sounds like it,” Shane agreed after Kelvin mentioned it to them.
“I think it was them,” Ryan said. “But luckily I was able to get the ship back to harbor safely. With your help, of course.”
“We helped you tie up to the dock, not actually get it into the harbor,” Brandon said. “You had to handle the ship the rest of the way here. I guess that's where having an automated hopper comes in handy.”
“We don't.”
That caught Kelvin's attention. Without an automated coal hopper or a gravity-fed system the engineers had to fuel the engine one shovelful at a time. And with only one crew member…
“Wait a minute,” Bailey said, interrupting his thoughts, “so you managed to stoke the engines to full steam, keep feeding them so they wouldn't die out, and steer the ship while dodging shellfire?”
“I had to run back and forth a lot,” Ryan said modestly. “It wasn't all that complicated.”
“That's what you think.”
“Could you do it?” Kelvin asked her.
“Yeah, I'm going with no for an answer. The fact that you were able to pull it off is pretty close to a miracle.”
“Um, anyhow,” Ryan said, clearly uncomfortable with the praise, “I'd like to give you something for your trouble, but I really don't have anything to spare.”
“Don't worry about it,” Shane reassured him. “We just saw you struggling and decided to help, that's all. And it's raiders, so any time we can spit in their face a little it makes for a better day.”
“Speaking of which,” Jamie spoke up, “here they come, so watch yourself.”
Kelvin glanced over his shoulder in time to see a group of five raiders step up, all of them armed to the teeth.
“You!” their leader said. “This is your last chance. Hand it over now.”
Ryan tried to retreat back into the pilothouse.
“Don't you walk away,” the raider leader said.
“And who's going to stop him?” Shane spoke up. “Unless you suddenly need permission to go walking around your own ship.”<
br />
“Shut your mouth. You can't even walk around with your face uncovered.”
Kelvin flexed his muscles, though at this point neither side could do anything. Starting a fight would just bring the NPC constables down on the perpetrators, and no one could die in a safe zone. So while he wanted to toss them all off the dock, he stayed in place and just watched.
“We're stepping off right now,” Shane said. “We have business to discuss. If you'd like to come with us.”
Kelvin smiled as Shane walked off the ship and pushed past the raiders without another word. He turned around and motion toward Ryan.
“Come on,” he said. “You heard the man. We have business to discuss.”
“Don't you leave!” the raider captain said, but the rest of the crew ignored them all.
At the moment Kelvin didn't care about the extra attention. The Iron Guild was hated by many, but their raiders were outright loathed, even by players on their own side. Their tendency to attack ships without warning made people wary of ships flying the Iron Guild ensign, but it also tended to make them more likely to fight. Let them throw a fit. He doubted they could get many supporters from the guild, most of which would like nothing better than to send the raiders to the bottom themselves.
They hurried away from the docks and toward the exchange. Kelvin glanced over his shoulder to make sure they weren't being followed.
“They're not behind us,” Brandon said to him.
“I didn't even say anything.”
“You were thinking it. That's why you were looking, right?” he said. “But I have the sentinel specialization. And I don't see them.”
“We need to be careful when we go back,” Jamie said. “They're likely going to track us and try to sink us.”
“Well then, we're just going to have to come up with a solution,” Kelvin said.
“You guys really don't know the meaning of covert, do you?”
“Sure we do. And we're sick of having to do it all the time. Besides, they're raiders. They're pretty much the most acceptable targets for everyone in the game.”
Jamie shook her head and didn't say anything else.
“I'm interested in one thing, though,” Kelvin said, turning to Ryan. “They ordered you to hand something over. What would that be?”
“I'm… I shouldn't say,” Ryan replied, clearly uncomfortable.
Kelvin decided to press the issue a little further. “Oh come on, we just stuck our necks out for you and helped you. The least you can do is to let us know what we've gotten ourselves into and what they want.”
“We...”
“Yeah?”
“Come on man, don't put so much pressure on him,” Shane said. “If you don't want to tell us that's fine.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, you all helped me out. I suppose that entitles you to know.”
“There's nothing about being entitled. It's if you want to tell us or not.”
Kelvin was content to step back and let Shane ferret out the information. He'd be the one putting on the pressure, while Shane would present a more reasonable alternative to put Ryan at ease.
“You know how there's places that don't show up on the map?” Ryan said. “Little inlets, hidden overhangs and caves?”
“So we're talking about the coastal features?” Brandon said.
“Yeah. Those. We've been charting those for a while. Our ship doesn't have a ton of range, so we used a few of them we found as hidden caches for fuel and vital supplies.”
That came with plenty of risks. Areas outside of the cities weren't protected, so anyone that stumbled across a cache could walk off with the goods. Of course, they had to find it first. And with the ability to extend the range of ships, the tradeoff was definitely worth the risk in many cases.
“So let me guess, those raiders want your chart,” Kelvin said.
“Yeah, I don't know how they found out, but they've been hounding us for weeks about it.”
Kelvin's mind started churning. He wouldn't know until he saw the chart, but the information held within could be very valuable. At the very least it could help smuggling ships, extending their endurance and giving them more options. For their own vessel, which burned coal at a rapid pace, it could let them reach out into the western end of the sea, maybe even as far as Arnel and the desert.
And if the theoretical class of warship they wanted to build came to fruition, this could make the concept far more practical. With the right setup they might be able to build a refueling depot in the right spot, allowing them to patrol a large area and protect the shipping there.
Could they get Ryan to hand over the information? How would they go about doing that? They couldn't just tell him their guild or affiliation. Would he be willing to give up their most valuable prize to complete strangers?
“I have another question for you,” Shane said. “Were you doing anything else besides fishing?”
“Like what?”
“I don't know, like transporting valuable cargo in hidden compartments?”
Ryan didn't answer, but Kelvin saw a guilty look flash across his face for a second.
“Oh come on you two, you're scaring him to death,” Bailey spoke up. “And are the streets really the place for this kind of a discussion? Let's at least get a private room so people can't eavesdrop.”
“That costs money,” Shane said.
“Are you really too cheap to spend a couple hundred gold for something like this?” she asked. “Because information in Beylan tends to be a heck of a lot more expensive than that.”
“The exchange has a hotel right next to it,” Kelvin suggested. “That should work just fine.”
Shane nodded. “OK, we can afford to take a little detour. Let's get this all straightened out first.”
The hotel wasn't fancy, more of a cosmetic building than anything else, but it did have private rooms for rent, designed to be completely immune to spying. In fact, finding a way to listen in on a conversation was considered to be an exploit, and thus one of the few grounds for a permanent ban.
Kelvin settled in to a chair, plush and made with red fabric. All things considered the room had decent aesthetics, with a deep red carpet, beige walls, and fine furniture, but that was all just window dressing. It could be grimy bare stone floors for all he cared, as long as the enemy couldn't listen in on them.
“So,” Shane spoke up, “to continue with my question earlier, you say you were out fishing, that's right?”
“That's right,” Ryan said, still appearing nervous. “That's the truth.”
“I don't doubt it. You don't seem like a very good liar. But are there things you're not telling us? Other details that you're leaving out?”
“I… don't know what you're talking about.”
“I think you do,” Shane said.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Jamie said, “but I want to know that as well. You said that they were smuggling things in hidden compartments. Do you have any proof of this, or is that all just speculation?”
“Inside the pilothouse,” Shane said. “Inside of it there's a hidden set of levers that don't seem to go to anything. When I looked around it didn't appear that they corresponded to anything that needed to be controlled. And why would they be hidden?”
“Maybe… maybe they were there before we purchased the ship?”
“I've sailed that class plenty of times before. That's not something that comes standard. It's a custom modification.”
Kelvin leaned back in his chair, absorbing the information. “So we can conclude that they go to something. And you believe that something is hidden smuggling compartments.”
“Probably in the hold,” Shane said. “That's where I'd put it. Then I'd fill it with fish so that if I got stopped they wouldn't bother going through it.”
“That's… that's a decent idea,” Ryan said, trying to be evasive. Kelvin almost felt sorry for him, stuck in a room with five strangers who hadn't even revealed their identity.
“So, you wo
uldn't happen do be doing that, would you?” Shane pressed.
Ryan didn't say anything.
“Well, I'll take that as a yes,” Bailey said. “The question is, what are you going to do now without a crew and a heavily damaged ship. I suppose that you can get the rest of your guild up here by the rail line, but Dux doesn't have a shipyard for the kind of repairs you'll need.”
“We'll manage,” Ryan said. Kelvin noticed him wringing his hands for a moment.
“Will you? Do you even had the money left for repairs like that?”
“We'll figure out something.”
“Let me ask you this,” Shane said. “What are you transporting?”
Ryan hesitated for a moment before taking a deep breath and speaking.
“Blood lotus.”
Kelvin whistled. “Jeeze, where'd you get that from? Someone was willing to sell it to you? Or you were willing to go up into the mountains to get it?”
“The first one.”
“Then either you're ridiculously rich, or you have no money now.”
Ryan looked down. “It's the second one.”
Blood lotus was a rare flower that grew in high elevations, filled with plenty of environmental hazards and monsters. It made getting one's hands on the goods highly dangerous, but they sold for a very price in Beylan. Chemists could use them as a component in many types of stimulants and potions that boosted a player's effectiveness during combat.
They were also a highly restricted trade good, so the person that sold them to Ryan's guild must have done so for a guaranteed amount of cash without the risk.
“So you were probably needing that to fund your efforts, is that right? Quite the gamble.”
“Probably would have worked too, if you didn't have the misfortune to run into the raiders,” Brandon said.
Ryan nodded, an unhappy look on his face. “Yeah.”
Shane shifted in his seat. “I'll tell you what. We're heading back to Beylan with our own smuggling load. Ours is going to be deep pearls, but that should leave us plenty of room to add a little more cargo. You only have one or two crates, right?”
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