Black Sails Vane Novels & Stories

Miro was right. Five ships. Black hulls. No lights. Moving in perfect formation. And on the lead ship, at the bow, stood a figure I recognized. Silas Vane. But he wasn't alone. Beside him stood a woman in white. Her hair was long and silver. Her face was hidden behind a mask. But her eyes — one blue, one red — burned through the lens. Dr. Reinhart. She wasn't dead. She wasn't dying. She had lied.

His right arm, encased in heavy white surgical plaster, throbbed with a burning, rhythmic agony inside its silk sling. Yes, Mr. Vance! The Vance Monarch, the Vance Sovereign, and the Vance Titan have all completely bypassed the southern straits, Harris, the chief logistics director, yelled back as he slammed his hands onto his keyboard. We went completely dark on the main maritime grid. We are entirely outside of Damian Thorne's primary shipping territory!

The morning after Inquisitor Vane’s ultimatum, the Blackwater River looked like a graveyard of iron. Three massive Southern warships sat anchored in the center of the flow, their steam vents huffing rhythmic clouds of grey smoke into the pristine mountain air. They were "teeth" of a different kind—not bone and sinew, but coal and steel. ​Rhea stood on the battlements, her fingers tracing the rough stone of the manor. Beside her, Elias was a statue of suppressed fury. The grey-gold veins on his neck pulsed in time with the thrumming of the ships' engines.

"Give them a target they can't hit!" Jace’s ship, the Ghost Whisper, vanished. Not into smoke, but into a literal fold in reality. Using the Shadow-Silk sails, his vessel became a translucent smudge against the turquoise sea, reappearing a mile to the left and unleashing a volley of obsidian bolts that tore through the leading edge of the swarm. "Thane, bring us about! Hard to port!" I roared. Thane slammed his weight against the helm, the Obsidian Wing groaning as its Eclipse-Glass prow sliced through the air. "Elora, they’re charging the Needle-Beams! If they hit the deck, the heat will melt the masts!"

Aboard The Sovereign. Engineering Bay. Zero Hour + 4 Hours. The massive engineering bay hissed with venting coolant and the ozone tang of raw plasma. The three "Black Reapers"—as the crew had already begun calling them—stood under the harsh maintenance lights. Though they had just systematically dismantled a divine tracking fleet without taking a single scratch, the colossal energy output from the Star-forged Cores required a mandatory cooldown sequence. Elias Vance climbed out of his cockpit, his pilot suit soaked in sweat, his eyes still dilated from the near-light-speed rush of adrenaline. He dropped from the gantry, stumbling slightly as his boots hit the deck.

POV RUBY The Siren’s Wake cut through the choppy black waters of the Irish Sea like a blade. Behind us, the fiery orange glow of the Docklands was nothing more than a bleeding scar on the horizon. The roar of the engine was a constant, low-frequency thrum that vibrated through the floorboards and up into my very bones. Silas was at the helm, his silhouette a grim statue against the spray-flecked glass of the cabin, leaving Nevan and me alone in the cramped, dimly lit quarters below deck.

"Look at the light." In the center of the clearing, the massive, black-matte Vane VTOL was hovering like a prehistoric bird. Its searchlights cut through the forest canopy, turning the swirling ash into a storm of grey ghosts. The side door slid open with a mechanical hiss, and a figure stepped out into the blinding glare. Silas.

"Silas, dump the silver-oil reserves into the external joints. We don't need lubrication anymore; we need a waterproof gasket!" The "Retraction" was a terrifying display of macro-engineering. The six rows of caterpillar treads—the massive, soot-stained steel plates that had conquered the North—began to fold upward. They tucked into the reinforced belly of the city with a sound like a mountain collapsing into a canyon. In their place, twelve massive "Hydraulic Vanes" slid out from the chassis. These were the city’s new fins, designed to catch the pressurized "Flow" of the deep-sea currents.

"The Blackwater facility... Vane said you were secured!" ​"Commander Vane is currently pinned to his own vault door in the northern mud," Vivian said, her voice ringing with an absolute, terrifyingly cold authority that sent a visible wave of shock through the vanguard enforcers below. She raised her wrist display, projecting a massive, three-dimensional financial ledger directly into the center of the hall. "And your private army is currently fighting for a bankrupt ghost. Check your network, Silas." ​BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

The thousands of blank, un-printed vellum sails above its decks billowed with our valley’s wind, their smooth surfaces free of lines, columns, or red ink. "That's not the Spire, Sara," Xander said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to rise directly from the pebbles beneath his feet. "Look at the draft of the hull. It's riding high. It’s not carrying a cargo of iron type-set or filing cabinets. It’s carrying empty space."