Wilco was the first to welcome them aboard. He had become Sig’s de facto second-in-command on the security force. When Sig was on away missions, Wilco took it upon himself to secure the shuttle bay. He greeted Jaxwell with fire in his eyes. Wilco had nothing but disdain for those running things. A man of such wealth and influence as Byers was exceptionally loathed.
“Take him to the brig,” Bayne said to Sig, who then nodded to Wilco, silently relaying the orders. “No detours,” Bayne added. “And don’t talk to anyone.”
Wilco did a double-take when he caught sight of Delphyne. He seemed indifferent about her return, but not so much that he didn’t notice its effect on Sig. “All good, Chief?”
“Fine,” Sig said. They escorted Byers out of the bay.
Wilco cursed something at Byers as they marched down the hall.
“What about me?” Delphyne said to Bayne.
The question was heavy with regret, like a child after being scolded. She seemed to shrink. Her regret lit a similar feeling in Bayne. He was the parent who let his temper get the better of him. He was the parent watching his child cowering in the corner, coming to the realization that it was he she was so terrified of.
“Report to your quarters,” Bayne said. “They haven’t changed. Get cleaned up. Rest.” He gripped her shoulder, held her eye in a reassuring look. “You did good.”
She returned a nod but not the assurance.
Bayne steeled himself for the confrontation before stepping onto the bridge. Which would be the bigger issue, he wondered, as the door slid open. Mao must have been staring holes through the other side of it, waiting for Bayne to step into his line of fire.
“Is it true?” Mao said.
Bayne shrugged, letting Mao reveal his hand.
“She’s back?”
“Yes,” Bayne said. “Delphyne is back.”
Mao’s stoic face cracked with a micro-expression of joy but immediately returned to the tight, judgmental face Bayne knew. “And you found her on the Burning Sun?” His tone was like a dagger slash across his chest, a shot across the bow.
And it drew the attention of the rest of the bridge crew. They looked to Bayne for answers and for his rebuttal, his slash back.
Two routes opened before Bayne. He could silence Mao with a tight-jawed dismissal and promise of later explanation, or he could be out with it. Each had benefits. The more contained he could keep his actions, the more control he had over the outcome. If there was ever a time for tight reins, this was it. Spies and moles were the order of the day. He’d begun employing the espionage tactics himself.
But he was a Ranger, not a spook, and he was quickly growing tired of secrets and shadow games.
“That I did,” Bayne said. Best to be out with it, then. “I knew I’d find her there because I was the one who ordered her into deep cover within the Byers Clan. I ordered her to break that cover so we could take Jaxwell Byers aboard the Blue and find out what’s going on.”
Best to be out with all of it.
Mao’s lips puckered. “You did what?”
His disbelief was echoed by much of the bridge crew. A quick, collective inhale nearly sucked all the oxygen out of the room. “Let’s focus, now,” Bayne said, trying to temper the anger flooding his brain and relay the information without attacking Mao. “I ordered Delphyne off this ship, deliberately deceived all of you, and placed her in deep cover without backup. I did that because both Parallax and Centel have a history of using moles to attack their enemies from within. Both with great effectiveness. Centel tried to infiltrate this crew before Triseca and was nearly successful, so I didn’t know who I could trust. I still don’t. But I’m damn tired of sneaking around in the dark.”
Mao’s jaw tightened, but not in the way it did when he was trying to keep from questioning Bayne. The way it did when he was questioning himself.
Bayne took it as a sign to keep pressing. “And, yes, we are now in possetion of Jaxwell Byers, son of Jasper Byers, intergalactic asshole of some renown. He is our best chance of getting some answers, and maybe clearing our names so we can all get back to sailing under a banner.” That sentiment rang hollow for Bayne, but he felt the attitude on the bridge shift. “Having him here also puts a huge target on our back, so, if we’re done, I’d appreciate if you would put us in a hard burn out of Byers territory.”
Mao’s eyes flicked about Bayne’s face like a pesky fly. He nodded and said, “Aye, Captain.”
They exited the Rickard Sea in a little under an hour. The nature of the place meant all hands at attention until they were free of the gravitational anomalies. Once they were, Bayne left the bridge and made straight for the brig.
Sigurd and Wilco were standing guard. Wilco leaned against the wall, twirling his dagger, watching it like it was leaf plucked off the branch by the wind and floating down to the ground. Sig stood at attention, weapon at the ready.
Bayne appreciated the diligence, especially considering that a mole on the ship was a real possibility. But he didn’t appreciate Sig’s finger inching slightly closer to his trigger at the sight of Bayne.
“How’s the prisoner?” Bayne said.
“Loud,” Wilco said. “Guy doesn’t shut up. At least, he didn’t.”
“What does that mean?” Bayne said.
Wilco shrugged. “Means he tripped and hit his face on my fist. Total accident, but he seemed to take it as some sort of threat.”
Wilco’s behavior didn’t surprise Bayne, but Sig allowing it did. Bayne zeroed Sig in an interrogative glare.
“I was away from my post,” Sig said in a robotic tone.
Bayne grunted a disapproving sound and gestured for Sig to step aside. He eyed Wilco with a narrowed stare as he reluctantly moved.
The door squealed as it opened inward. Jaxwell flinched at the unexpected movement and the appearance of Bayne in the doorway.
Bayne stood for a moment, allowing Byers to soak in the horrors of his own imagination. The tortures he thought up were far worse than anything Bayne would probably do to him.
Byers straightened as Bayne stepped into the room. He could tell that Byers wanted to speak. His lips quivered against a stream of words fighting to get out. The cut over his eye discouraged him from letting them loose.
“Sorry about that,” Bayne said, pointing at the cut. “Wilco is a bit exuberant.”
Jaxwell laughed. “Spare me the head games. You sent him in here to rattle me. Then you come in, exhibit empathy, and form a connection. Then you get me to contact my father and convince him to pay whatever absurd ransom you’re demanding.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “Whatever amount you’re asking for isn’t nearly enough. And, also, you can go walk out the airlock, because I’m not going to help you extort my family.”
Bayne laughed, possibly tipping his hand and shattering his illusion at the very least. But he couldn’t help being amused that every word out of Jaxwell’s mouth was so wrong. “Believe what you want. As long as you tell me what I want.”
“I won’t help you extort my father,” Jaxwell said, jutting his chin out defiantly.
“I’m not interested in your father’s money. I’m not interested in your father at all. I kidnapped you because of you.” Bayne flashed a patronizing smile. “Congratulations, you’ve stepped out of your father’s shadow.”
Jaxwell shifted his weight and his attitude from defensive to interested. Though Bayne meant it as a sarcastic jab, Jaxwell took it as a genuine compliment. “What are you talking about?”
Bayne squatted, resting his elbows on his thighs and putting all his weight in his heels. “You’ve been putting out contracts on me.”
Jaxwell kept his expression tight. There was a subtle change, but not enough that Bayne could read the thought behind it.
“I’ve spoken with a few of your subcontractors,” Bayne said. “You get what you pay for.” He shrugged, again heavy on the patronizing and ego. “They pointed me toward the broker you used. Abbaghast.”
“
Never heard of him,” Jaxwell said.
“He’s here.” Bayne jutted a thumb behind him. “I can get him if you’d like. Maybe air some professional grievances. Request a refund?”
Byers pushed his back into the wall and used the leverage to get to his feet. He paced along the wall, looking down at his feet, stroking his chin.
As he paced, an idea began to form in Bayne’s mind. As Byers took his seventh turn, the idea solidified. “You didn’t know.”
Jaxwell froze. He looked down at his hands, his eyes wide and busy. Something was running through his head, a puzzle being pieced together. And then the last piece clicked together. Byers shot upright. “No.”
Bayne stood to match him. “What? You just realized something. What is it?”
Byers walked away. He stood in the corner, staring at the wall. He was silent a moment. The emptiness of the brig filled with the heaviness of the realization inside Jaxwell’s head. “I won’t help you take down my father.” He sat cross-legged in the corner and leaned forward, his forehead resting against the wall.
Bayne stared at his back, wishing he could beat the secret out of Jaxwell’s head. He left before he could give in to his desire.
“Tell you anything good?” Wilco asked, still twirling his knife.
Bayne knitted his brow, coming to a realization of his own. “Maybe.”
13
The war room smelled of dust and stale air. Like a forgotten library, a collection of unused things. Not that the war had stopped, but the planning and strategizing had. They hadn’t convened in the room since Triseca. Bayne stopped taking the counsel of others. Hep believed he was partially responsible for that.
The captain offered him the opportunity to make a choice, a chance at redemption. And he chose to stay aboard the Blue. He chose to follow Bayne into this fight that he didn’t fully understand. But there had been a rift between them ever since. Bayne stopped talking to him, stopped taking him on away missions. He had become a pariah in Bayne’s eyes.
But the captain also stopped seeking the advice of others he had once relied on. Mao, Sig, Delphyne before she left. His trust was shaken, and Hep knew that was because of him.
Which made Hep’s presence in the war room so confusing.
Delphyne’s presence only confused the matter further.
“What?” Delphyne finally said, snapping at Hep for staring at her.
“I thought you left,” he said.
“I did. I came back.”
“I thought you had red hair.”
“I did. Now it’s blue.” Despite her brusque responses, a smile spread across her face. “Any other keen observations?”
“I’m glad you’re back.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but closed it without saying anything.
Bayne walked in a moment later, followed by Mao. He wasted no time in prefacing the purpose of their meeting. “What was Jaxwell’s mandate in this sector?” he asked Delphyne.
She closed her eyes and moved her lips like she was reading something. “To protect and further the interests of the Byers Clan.”
“Can you be more specific than that?” Bayne asked.
“No,” Delphyne said. “That’s literally what his mandate is. I read it. It came straight from his father.”
“Is that normal?” Mao asked.
“No,” Delphyne said. “I scoured the Byers intranet while I was aboard the Burning Sun. I read the mandates of several other ships in the Byers fleet. Different classes, different sectors, totally different mandates, ranging from escort of civilian contractors to engagement of hostile pirates. None of them were that short and none of them came directly from Jasper Byers.”
That seemed to mean something important to Bayne and Mao as they both fell into silent thought. Delphyne closed her eyes again, maybe rereading the mandate or analyzing it now that she knew it was important.
Hep raised his hand. “Why am I here?”
Bayne pressed on, seemingly ignoring him. “When I questioned Jaxwell, he assumed I kidnapped him for ransom. He said he wouldn’t help me extort his father. He didn’t seem to connect me to the contracts he submitted to the broker. When I pressed him, he didn’t seem to be aware that I was even the target.”
“Could he be lying?” Mao asked.
Bayne shook his head. “He didn’t outright say he didn’t know, but I could read it on him. And I don’t get the sense that he’s a good liar.”
“He’s not,” Delphyne added. “He had no need to be. As the son of one of the most powerful men in the system, he’s used to getting what he wants. He never has to resort to deceit.”
Mao began pacing around the table, chin up, hands clasped behind his back, like a philosopher strolling down the beach. “The broker would not implicate such a high-level client and burn a bridge with the Byers Clan with a lie. So, assuming Jaxwell was unaware you were the target, that means someone else wrote the contracts and used Jaxwell as a middleman to submit them to another middleman. Jaxwell’s position in the Deep Black makes him the perfect candidate. He’s further from the scrutiny of clan and United Systems overseers, and closer to the sort of element that would accept bounty contracts. Someone obviously wanted to remain anonymous.”
“Jasper?” Bayne said. “But why the back-channels? After what he thinks I did to Triseca, no one would fault him for issuing bounty contracts on me.”
Thought consumed them again, and Hep was left wondering why he was in the room. They were the best minds on the ship, and he was just the fill-in comms officer. And now that Delphyne was back, he wouldn’t even be that.
Bayne broke the silence. “There was something else Jaxwell said. After I pressed him, he said he wouldn’t help me take down his father. Instead of extort. Something changed. He stopped assuming I took him for ransom after he found out I was the target on those contracts.”
“Maybe he thought you targeted him for revenge,” Mao said. “Or to put an end to the contracts.”
Bayne shook his head. “I watched him as he realized something. It was deeper than that. He totally shifted from defensive to passive. He just stopped fighting.”
Delphyne opened her eyes. “Jasper isn’t targeting you because of Triseca.” She said it with certainty.
“How do you know that?” Bayne asked.
“When did you encounter the first bounty hunter?” Delphyne asked.
“One week after Triseca,” Mao said.
Delphyne closed her eyes again. Her lips moved as she nodded, having a private conversation with herself. Then she decided to let the others in on it. “The timeline doesn’t add up. To route a contract through Jaxwell, to the broker, and then out to subcontractors would take a week by itself. Then for the bounty hunters to track the Blue, even the best among them couldn’t do that in under a week. The contracts were issued before Triseca.”
The revelation was heavy. It filled the room and made Hep forget the smell of dust. It made him suddenly happy to be in war room, a place designed to plan for the worst, to plan an attack, because he knew what that revelation meant. “The Byers Clan issued a contract on an active duty Navy captain.”
Energy seemed to shoot through Bayne. He suddenly couldn’t stand still. He paced a meter length of floor, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands clapping together. “But why? To cover up Ore Town? If it was something that needed covering up, then the Navy wouldn’t have ended up planning a joint attack with the Byers Clan to attack Parallax at Ore Town. There wasn’t enough time between me leaving Ore Town and alerting Central of the situation for Jasper to attempt to silence me. The contract is about something else.”
“What else is there?” Mao asked.
There was only one other thing. And it suddenly made sense. Hep knew why he was in the room. “The Rangers.” Mao and Delphyne looked at him like he had two heads. Not Bayne. Some part of Bayne already knew.
“Connect the dots for me, kid,” Delphyne said.
Hep was surprised to see Bayne look at him e
xpectantly as well. “Well, if the bounty hunters caught up with us a week after Triseca, realistically, the contract was issued about two months before that, a little after Ore Town. Like you all said, Byers had no reason to try and cover that up. Only thing worth covering up after that was what the captain learned about the Rangers…”
Delphyne shrugged. “I don’t know what that means. What did you learn?”
Bayne retold the story of the Rangers’ end. How they were offered positions as commissioned officers in the Navy as reward for their efforts in defeating the warlords. How those who refused were lured to a remote location in the Deep Black under the guise of one last mission. How they were massacred. He told it robotically now. Empty of the fire. He’d detached himself from the story.
Delphyne looked like she was going to vomit. “That is… I can’t…” She sunk into her chair, pulled down by an invisible weight, her words dying on the tip of her tongue.
Mao continued as if unaffected, though Hep was getting good at reading the micro-movements in his expression. “But, if Hep is correct, what reason would Byers have to cover that up? A scandal of such magnitude would rock the United Systems, but business would likely continue unimpeded for a conglomerate as expansive as the Byers Clan. They are hardly an altruistic bunch. They are self-serving.”
They all seemed to come to the same realization at once.
“They would only act if it served their interests,” Delphyne said.
“If the coverup served them,” Mao added.
“If they served in the coverup,” Hep said.
Bayne’s fire returned. “They were complicit in the massacre of the Rangers.”
The implications clogged Hep’s lungs. The others choked on the idea. Hep imagined Bayne alone with Parallax in the corpse of his ship. Stabbed through the heart with information that shattered his understanding of the world. The fundamental rules of life were broken, rewritten, replaced by laws that contradicted everything they thought they knew.
That was how Hep felt now. Upside-down.
Ranger Bayne (The Deep Black Book 3) Page 7
