The hull looked like it was welded together with napalm. But it had managed to get to Backwater, which meant it had what it took to survive the Deep for at least a little while. And a little while at a time was all Bayne could focus on right now.
The hiss of depressurization likely scared the fish away, which Bayne didn’t mind. No more interruptions. Several sets of feet marched down the ramp, moving with expediency and a lack of discipline. Their voices came through the comm on the dead man’s wrist.
“Murph, where you at?” a gravelly voice said. “We’re at your coordinates.”
They would spot Bayne momentarily. They always looked out over the water first. It drew their gaze like it had its own gravity. Then their eyes drifted to the shore and found him, like a hermit sitting on a log. They would move on him, likely leaving no one to guard the ship because, like most scavengers and hunters who ventured this far out, they were undisciplined and stupid.
Once they moved twenty meters from their ship, it would be all over. Bayne would tug the line out of the water and drop them in his bucket.
And that was exactly what happened.
“There,” one of the newcomers said. They moved like a herd of deer scattered by a gunshot.
Ten meters. Fifteen. Twenty…
“Don’t move!” Wilco shouted. He stepped out of a thicket of trees between them and Bayne, cutting off their path forward.
They laughed at the sight of the sixteen-year-old boy holding a blaster on the two of them. They stopped when Sigurd, Hepzah, and a team of three others appeared behind them, cutting them off from their ship.
“I’ll thank you to drop those guns,” Wilco said.
The men took him more seriously with the backing of a trained away team. They dropped their weapons. Wilco held the men while Sigurd and the rest of the team swept the interior of their ship.
Sigurd emerged minutes later with his team, minus Hep. Sig walked past the men to Bayne.
“Ship’s clear, sir,” Sig said.
Bayne turned from the lake for the first time. He wished he hadn’t. He’d rather look out on the water and its unchanging surface than Sig’s face. Once youthful, joy bubbling beneath eyes that had seen the worst in people. He was always fidgeting, jumping at the chance to act, to move, to do. He was a terrible fit for a tour in the Deep now that Bayne thought about it. But his presence always set Bayne at ease.
Now, looking on Sigurd’s tight expression, rarely ever cracking into that jovial smile, Bayne would sooner be nowhere near him. He only reminded Bayne of things he’d rather forget.
“Hep’s cataloguing the inventory,” Sig said. He turned and marched back toward the men without word from Bayne.
“Inventory?” one of the men said. “You mean the stuff on my ship. My stuff.”
Bayne propped his pole against a rock, wedging it between the rock and the ground so it wouldn’t be dragged into the lake if he hooked a fish. He stood and faced the man. “I’ll be commandeering your stuff.”
“Commandeering.” The man laughed. “You ain’t Navy no more. It’s just called stealing now.”
Bayne looked at his hands. He looked at Sig, whose eyes fell to the dirt. “I’ll be stealing your stuff, then.”
“Over my dead body—”
The man’s voice ended in an abrupt and explosive flash.
Smoke wafted from the barrel of Wilco’s blaster. Sigurd didn’t even flinch anymore.
The other two bounty hunters froze solid, now standing over the dead bodies of two of their comrades.
Bayne picked his belt up from a nearby stump. He tied it around his waist. The two blades—one black, one blue—hung on his hips. He lifted his holster off the limb of a small tree and looped it over his shoulder, so it draped across his chest, his dual pistols resting over his heart.
He drew the black blade, the one Parallax called Malevolence. “Who put up the bounty?” They said nothing. They likely couldn’t if they wanted to, their jaws clenched so tight. Bayne put the tip of his blade to one the men’s cheek. He pressed, the slightest pressure, and blood beaded.
The man winced but didn’t answer.
With a seemingly effortless flick of his wrist, Bayne drew the point across the man’s cheek, carving a deep gash and splattering the ground with blood. The man dropped to his knees, screaming.
Bayne pressed the tip of Malevolence to the second man’s chest. “Who put up the bounty?”
The man squirmed, tripping over his words until he was finally able to spit some out. “Broker. Came through a broker.”
Bayne pressed his sword harder into the man’s chest, cutting through layers of spacewalk suit with ease.
“A middleman,” the bounty hunter. “Guy based on Teo, dumpy little station in the Black, near the Rigor Cluster.”
Wilco sucked in through his teeth. “I know the place. Really is a dump.”
“The broker’s name,” Bayne said.
“Goes by Abbaghast. All I know.” He put out his hands like he was under arrest.
Bayne shoved his sword through the man’s chest. Blood pooled in his mouth and trickled down his lip. Malevolence sang as Bayne pulled it from the man’s body.
Hep emerged from the ship as the man hit the ground. He was the only one to give the dead a second look. He walked around them when the others stepped over them like they were logs or rocks or bags of garbage. He stood at Bayne’s side and read off a list of items he found aboard the hunters’ ship that could prove useful—foodstuffs, weapons and ammo, tech that could be broken down for parts or repurposed.
“Take it all,” Bayne said. Hep made for the ship. As Wilco began to follow, Bayne gestured to the bodies. He didn’t say anything, but it was known what he wanted.
Wilco stooped by each body like a vulture and picked them clean. Weapons and spacewalk suits. He threw them in a pile to be collected later.
Bayne returned to his fishing pole. “Take your time,” he said, though the crew were already at work and out of earshot. “Could do without any interruptions for a while.”
2
The bridge was quiet. As it had been for weeks. Ironically, the quiet meant more work for Taliesin Mao. Typically one to appreciate solitude and the focus on duty, both had been wearing on him as of late.
Unless they were in flight, Mao was the only one on the bridge. He was not ordered so, but he was not comfortable leaving the bridge unoccupied. A Navy ship’s bridge must always have at least one officer present.
But, then, the Royal Blue was no longer a Navy ship. And he was no longer a naval officer. It would take him more than a few weeks to accept that as truth. If he ever did.
Even if it weren’t for his attachment to Navy protocol, Mao would have found it unpleasant leaving the bridge. He knew this place. Regardless of the banner under which he sailed, keeping the ship sailing required the same things. They never changed. Everything on the ship had. Everything off the bridge was different.
Their reasons for sailing. Their approach to conflict. Their relationship to every governing body in the galaxy. Their relationships to each other. All drastically different than they were a month ago.
Their captain. Perhaps he had changed most of all. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was the same man he’d always been and was only now letting it show. That thought bothered Mao most of all. The thought that nothing had changed, that he was only now seeing things for how they’d always been.
“Mao,” a voice said over the general comm. Sigurd. “Pop the cargo bay.”
“It went…well, then?” That description for what just happened made him ill, but he had no other words for it. It was a success as far as achieving their intended goals of gathering supplies and information. But it hollowed them out a little each time.
“Just pop the hatch,” Sigurd said.
He did, then watched over the monitors as the supplies were loaded. His stomach lurched when he saw Wilco carrying what looked like several spacewalk suits.
The captain walked
in after everything was loaded, that damnable fishing rod slung over his shoulder, like he was on vacation. Mao shut off the monitors. He fell into his chair, the one that used to be reserved for Executive Officer Taliesin Mao and now belonged to just Mao. Fugitive from justice Mao. Pirate Mao.
The comm hissed with static as it activated. A voice equally disjointed came through. “Captain about?” Elvin Horus. Former Navy captain. Former Byers Clan employee. Current drunk and Royal Blue crewman.
“He just boarded,” Mao answered.
“Good. I got some things need saying.”
Mao sighed. “About?”
“Huh? Oh, that mission he sent me on. So, a mission report, then. Tell him I got one of those. On my way back now.”
Mao buried his face in his hands and ended the call. He looked up when Hep stormed on to the bridge and slammed a box of parts on the deck. “Something the matter?”
Hep thought he was alone. He jumped at the sound of an unexpected voice. “No.”
Mao pushed himself out of chair. “How many this time?”
Hep stared at the box full of broken tech and random parts. “Three.”
Mao was not a religious man. He never had been, even in childhood. His parents were atheists who worshipped science and logic. If he knew a prayer, he would have said it. Not for those three men, he knew what sort they were, but for those that had a hand in killing them. For those who grew used to killing with every passing day. For the young ones.
But he knew no prayers and was not gifted in comforting, so he clapped Hep on the back and changed the subject. “What is this?” He pointed to the box.
Hep tapped the box with his foot, not quite hard enough to be considered a kick. “Everything I could cannibalize from the bounty hunters’ ship. Some pieces from their navigation monitors. Took their comm array apart. Captain wants me to reconfigure ours again in case the Navy’s gotten our signal.” He rubbed his left temple with his thumb. “She showed me how to do it one time. Not like I’m any kind of expert. It’d be a lot easier if she were here.”
Mao sighed, a release of pressure that suddenly built inside him. “A lot of things would be easier if she was here.”
Mao’s personal comm rang. “Any word?” Bayne had become increasingly terse over the previous weeks. It left Mao to interpret much of what the captain was saying by assuming the things he wasn’t saying.
“Horus is on his way back,” Mao said. “He has a mission report.”
“Let me know when he lands,” Bayne said. The line went dead.
The stench of rum preceded Horus by several meters. Mao smelled him coming before he rounded the corner in the corridor and stepped onto the bridge. “What’sa good word?”
Mao looked at him through narrowed, judgmental eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Means what it means,” Horus said with a belch.
Mao shook his head.
Bayne entered the bridge, trailed closely by Wilco, then Sig a bit further behind. The order didn’t please Mao. Sig distancing himself was understandable. It was Wilco’s closeness that bothered him.
Hep was sitting in the navigator’s chair, one of the many duties he’d taken on in the past few weeks. He was a quick study. His time as a pirate troubled Mao initially, but it was now proving useful. He was knowledgeable of ships and familiar with their systems, if not versed in how to use them. His background allowed him to pick it up quickly, and he was always eager to learn more.
Wilco never seemed eager to do anything other than fight. If Hep was becoming more a sailor, Wilco was becoming more a pirate, relishing the opportunities where his tendency toward violence made him an asset.
“Let’s hear it,” Bayne said.
After a stretch of silence, Horus looked around at the eager faces, waiting for someone to speak. “Well? Out with it,” Horus finally said.
“He’s talking to you,” Wilco said with a chuckle.
“Right,” Horus said, touching his finger to the tip of his nose. “Knew that. Out with what, then?”
The muscles of Bayne’s jaw pulsed. “Mission report.”
Horus’s face lit up with understanding. “Aye, that’s right. Report. It’s in the shuttle. Tucked in the cargo hold.”
“What is?” Mao asked, his patience spent.
Horus fell into the nearest chair. “That ghostly fella I was sent to nab on Teo,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Abbaghast.”
3
The anger on the bridge was stronger than the stink of rum on Horus’s breath. It stung Bayne’s nose as he breathed it in.
Mao was suddenly the only other man on the bridge with Bayne. He had the ability to do that, draw your attention so completely that everything else faded away. And he did so quietly, like a thunderstorm on the horizon, far enough you couldn’t hear it, but you could see the flashes of lightning.
“You sent Horus to Teo?” The weight of Mao’s question pressed against Bayne’s chest. “That’s the next quadrant over. He crossed two Byers trade routes. By himself. And none of us knew. None of us were prepared to provide backup should he need it.”
“I knew.” Wilco appeared in their conversation, stepping through the fog born of Mao’s intense gaze. He quickly faded back into it when Mao turned that gaze on him.
“Three of the last five bounty hunters we questioned said they got the contract through the same broker. I need to question him.” Bayne didn’t wield protocol like a weapon anymore. He didn’t shut down dissension with a snap of his fingers. He’d relinquished that authority after Triseca. But Mao couldn’t wield it either.
Though he still tried to. “You put Horus at unnecessary risk. You should have at least sent one of us with him. No solo missions can be executed without authorization—”
“From who?” Bayne snapped. “Admiral Ayala? Would you like me to run the details of my mission plans by her?”
Wilco briefly appeared again from the fog, barely stifling his laughter.
“There is no higher authorization than that which comes from me.” Bayne heard the arrogance in his words, though he didn’t intend it.
Mao heard it, too. The look on his face made Bayne keenly aware of everyone else on the bridge. The fog lifted, burned away by the heat radiating from Bayne’s cheeks. The crew looked to Bayne for…something. He wasn’t sure what. To further grind his heel on Mao’s insubordination? Humility? Likely, they wanted both.
“Collect the broker,” Bayne ordered Wilco. “I’ll question him in my quarters.” There was no room for humility. No room for second-guessing, not from his crew or himself. He needed a firm stance, always. One foot firmly planted with the other moving forward, toward something. Taking a step back meant walking into his pursuers or giving up on clearing his name. Or losing more crew. They could not see him waver.
Wilco hoisted Horus to his feet and steadied him. They walked off the bridge. A nod from Mao sent Sigurd and Hep following after. Then it really was just Bayne and Mao.
The silence that stretched between them was as vast as the Deep Black, and just as encompassing.
“Permission to speak freely, sir,” Mao said, adopting a formal stance and tone.
“We aren’t Navy anymore, Taliesin. Enough with the protocol.”
“Then what are we?” The force of Mao’s voice slapped Bayne across the face. “Better you don’t answer that. I’m not sure I would like the answer. I know what I am. I am a sailor. I am Navy whether the Navy accepts that or not, so I will continue to behave as such. And I will continue to act as the XO I have always been, by pointing out to you when you are on a path that will inevitably lead to regret.”
Bayne squared his stance, the indifference gone. “I did not set myself on this path.”
Mao stepped up to him, matching Bayne’s intensity. “You sound like a child. No one is responsible for your decisions besides you.”
“Then stop trying to affect my decisions.” Bayne walked off the bridge, Mao’s burning anger searing holes in his ba
ck.
Bayne imagined he was back sitting on the beach, pole in his hand, eyes on the bobber. It was bouncing on tempest waves now.
Wilco was propping Horus up outside Bayne’s quarters. The older man looked like he might vomit, or pass out. His eyes were open only enough to notice that it was Bayne who approached. “Captain, my captain,” he slurred. “Apologies for the state of…me. Had to play the part.”
Bayne placed a reassuring hand on Horus’s shoulder. “Take him to his quarters,” Bayne said to Wilco. There was enough open space on the ship now that nearly every remaining crew member was able to have their own cabin. “We’ll debrief in the morning.”
Horus grunted something unintelligible as Wilco walked him away.
Bayne pushed the image of the Royal Blue’s corridors once bustling with sailors and friends out of his mind. He could not make decisions out of a sense of loss. That only led to more loss.
He opened the door to his quarters.
A well-dressed man stood to greet him as if Bayne had stepped into this man’s quarters. He nodded, welcoming him, making Bayne question where he was for a half-second. Abbaghast was in his early forties, Bayne knew from an intel report, but he looked much younger, possibly confirming a rumor mentioned in the report that Abbaghast underwent frequent cosmetic surgery. Even the motivations of the supposed act were merely rumor. Some suggested it was a way of eluding arrest, even though most of his activities of record were legal. Assuming brokering bounty contracts was his only business. Others suggested he ran afoul of one of the largest crime families in the system, the Pesmergas. Others suggested it was Parallax of whom he’d run afoul. Both entities had a reputation brutal enough to warrant changing your face.
This man standing before Bayne looked no older than thirty. His hair was jet black and streaked with midnight blue. He wore an easy smile and an expensive, tailored suit. His tie hung loose around his neck, suggesting either a laidback disposition or a rough trip from Teo.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 19
