Running the comm room was important but also thankless. The only recognition was negative, when a link could not be established. A successful call was expected and, therefore, not receiving of compliments. No one took into account the intricacies of connecting two systems lightyears apart, through solar flares and magnetic storms and radiation fluxes. And that was for everyday communication. That didn’t account for the added difficulties of a black channel call. Scrambling the frequency. Bouncing the signal off abandoned satellites. Piggybacking off other signals. All while keeping the call secret and untraceable.
But the things that made the process difficult were the reasons Hep enjoyed it, even if it was thankless. It was a puzzle, a code that he needed to decipher. It kept his mind busy, off other things.
Hep spoke into his comm. “Graeme, how long until we have cover?”
The new nav officer answered in his unusually specific manner. “Six minutes and thirteen seconds. Twelve seconds. Eleven.”
“Thank you,” Hep said. He was elbow deep in the guts of the comm array frequency generator, the device responsible for coding all outgoing calls. That was the most important part in establishing a black channel—scrambling the frequency. It wasn’t a one-time action; the Navy, and probably the Byers Clan, and whoever else could afford the systems, ran descrambling software, so the frequency needed to be altered several times during the call. Hep had already established the initial frequency and was now plotting out secondary and tertiary signals, but they needed physical cover to place the call.
The Royal Blue was currently en route to the Mazzokeen Cluster, an asteroid field formed from the remains of a dead planet. Mazzokeen’s core was a particularly volatile mix of radioactive elements that eventually doomed the entire planet to an explosive end. But now, it provided the perfect camouflage for Hep to establish his black channel. The radiation would confuse Navy sensors. If they were able to trace the call to its source, the cluster would provide them cover.
“You in here?”
Hep recognized Wilco’s voice even with his head inside a metal box. “Here.”
Wilco appeared at Hep’s feet, stooping down to look into the open panel of the frequency generator. “This looks fun.”
It was, but Wilco meant so sarcastically, so Hep didn’t answer.
Wilco didn’t seem to notice. “Cap wanted me to make sure you’re good to go.”
“I’m good.”
But Wilco did notice the terseness in Hepzah’s voice. He fell back into a sitting position. “You seem tetchy. Are you tetchy?”
Hep wanted to kick out and hit Wilco in the chest, listen to him wheeze. But that would have meant losing the configuration he’d worked so hard for. “You checked. I’m good. You can go.”
“Yeah,” Wilco said. “Definitely tetchy.”
“Just let me do my job,” Hep said. “Don’t you have someone to stab or some legs to break or something?”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. I fix the comm array. You kill people. We’ve all got our jobs.”
Wilco leaned onto his elbows so he could see Hep’s face half-hidden in wires. “I’m going to venture a guess and say you’ve got a problem of some kind.”
His laidback persona filled Hep with fire. “I thought we were getting away from it.” Silence filled the room. “From killing. From death. From the constant fighting.”
“What else is there?” Wilco said as a matter of fact. “That’s all there’s ever been. What makes you think there can be anything else?”
Hep chewed the inside of his cheek. He had almost got everyone killed because he believed there could be something else. He was inches from selling Bayne to Tirseer in the hopes she would allow him and Wilco a quiet life somewhere, that maybe they could know some peace. It was a fantasy. He wouldn’t even know peace if it bit him on the butt, it was such a foreign concept. That was why fantasies were so dangerous—people are more willing to kill for them than they are for the truth.
But in the end, he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t destroy the reality for the dream. The dream was a lie, anyway. Tirseer never would have allowed him and Wilco to walk away. Bayne allowed him to stay, to be a member of the crew. Hep thought that was forgiveness at first. But would Bayne allow him to walk away? Was this just a different way of keeping him prisoner?
Would Wilco go with him?
“One minute and seven seconds,” Graeme said over the comm. “Six seconds. Five.”
“Thank you,” Hep said, ending the Graeme’s countdown. “Just let me know when the captain gives the order.”
Wilco said nothing. He watched as Hep readied to connect the call. Wilco had always been the talker, and Hep had no problems with that. He would sooner lean against the wall and listen and let Wilco speak for the both of them. But Wilco didn’t seem to do that anymore. He spoke only for himself. And now, when they were alone, silence fell on them like a heavy blanket on a hot night, stifling and uncomfortable.
Hep used to like the silence. He was comfortable there, no matter who else was there with him. They would squirm and try to wriggle free of it. Hep soaked in it. But now, when it was just the two of them, his gut pinched, and he wished another person was there with them.
“Make the contact.” Bayne’s voice came over comms, a sudden relief from the silence. “Echo-twelve-echo.”
“Aye,” Hep said. “Patching you through.” He made the last of the frequency connections and pressed the red button on the control panel. “We’re broadcasting, Captain.”
“Start the countdown,” Bayne said.
They could only broadcast on one frequency for a minute. Longer than that and they risked the signal being traced.
“Delphyne?” Bayne’s voice sounded over the comm. It rang with sadness. “Do you copy?” She didn’t answer. He asked again, and again, no answer. The minute passed.
“Changing frequency,” Hep said. He unplugged connections and made new ones. Once the signal changed, he crossed the words “echo-thirteen-echo” off his list.
Bayne continued calling her name to no answer. Another minute. Another change in signal. Another minute. Another change.
The tone of Bayne’s voice did not change. He continued to call into the darkness with a steady timbre. Hep knew it was not the same for the rest of the crew. None had truly realized how important Delphyne was until she was gone. She was a valuable officer, occupying one of the few spots on the away team, which was reserved for those who could think on their feet, assess and solve unsolvable problems, and handle themselves in a firefight. That alone meant her absence left a hole in the crew’s readiness.
But it was the loss of Delphyne the person, not the officer, that was felt more day to day. She had a way of breaking the tension that no one else aboard had. And there was loads of tension that needed breaking.
“Changing frequencies,” Hep said as another minute ticked by.
Wilco sighed. “This is pointless. She ain’t answering.”
“You tell the captain to let it go, then. Because I’m not.”
Wilco snorted. “I’ll let Mao do it.”
They both laughed.
“Why are we wasting our time, anyway?” Wilco asked. “Delphyne jumped ship. She obviously doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
“Bayne must have a reason,” Hep said. “He doesn’t do much without one. Something to do with that broker.”
“Don’t see how that could be if she’s hiding out on some forest moon somewhere.” Wilco pulled a dagger from his boot. “I’ll get whatever information that broker’s got in his head.”
Hep winced at the thought of Wilco digging his knife into anyone. They were no strangers to violence. They’d nearly grown immune to it during their lives as pirates. They had every reason to. Their lives were violence. Killing to survive. But Hep had grown tired of it. The idea of putting a blaster in a man’s face made him ill.
Wilco didn’t have the same reservations. The further Hep tried to
step away from the life of a pirate, the closer Wilco seemed to get. At this point, Hep didn’t know where else to step. Even if he could get off the Royal Blue, he would only be walking into the life of a fugitive. Which would only mean more violence.
The countdown neared zero and another change of frequency.
He reached to unplug the first of the connections when a voice sounded over the comm.
“Shut this channel down,” Delphyne said. “You’re going to get me killed.”
6
Three Months Ago…
Only once did Delphyne remember the entire crew being gathered at the same time, and that was for the funeral of the former Chief of Security Albert Tengaar. A beloved man. They put the ship into drift and gathered together to mourn.
It was also the only time Delphyne remembered Bayne crying.
She wished he was crying now. It would have been a more welcome emotion than the anger flaring in his eyes. Sadness could be just as unpredictable as anger, but it tended to slow people down. Bayne had not stopped since they fled Triseca.
His unpredictability was coming at breakneck speeds.
The mess hall barely accommodated everyone. Most were standing. There was seating for more, but some couldn’t sit if they wanted to. Delphyne was one. Sigurd was another.
He stood at her side, his shoulder touching hers. There was a time when that was all she could have focused on. But, like her, Sigurd was somewhere else. Like Bayne, that somewhere else was someplace angry.
Bayne cleared his throat, not that he needed to—the mess was silent as the void. “You have done nothing wrong.” He took a moment to scan the crowd, to meet the eye of as many as he could to ensure that message sunk in. “You have been labeled criminals, fugitives, but you did nothing to earn it. You followed my orders. You are good sailors. But we are in a time when being good sailors does not carry the weight that it should. The Navy has been infiltrated. Even some who claim to serve its best interests have twisted what they believe those interests to be. The Navy is sick.”
Some rumbles sounded from the crowd. Disbelief.
“I will not rest until I clear my name and the restore the reputation of this ship and its crew,” Bayne continued. “But I will not force any here to do the same. The Navy has dissolved your obligation to it. You will not be considered deserters should you choose to leave, and I will not stop you, but you must make the decision now. We will be approaching the Iron Port within the hour. Any who wish to do so can disembark there and book passage wherever they choose.”
He turned his back to the crowd and took a deep breath before continuing. “All those who wish to leave, please speak to XO Mao in the landing bay. He will remove your names from the ship’s ledger.”
At first, none moved. They just stared at Bayne’s back like they were waiting for him to turn around and yell, “Just kidding.” But he didn’t. He kept his back to them, his head hung low, a position in which they had never seen their captain.
Maybe that was when they realized that he was no longer their captain, the ones who left. Slowly, one by one, they began to leave. They didn’t make a show of it, didn’t yell anything at Bayne’s back. It felt like a funeral procession as they began to funnel out of the mess hall.
As the mourners passed by Delphyne, and the ship began to empty out, she felt the pull to join them, like a current, a plug pulled from a drain. She swam against it out of instinct. She was a sailor. To abandon ship was the vilest action she could take.
But she wasn’t a sailor. Not anymore. Not in the Navy. She was a criminal. A fugitive. As long as she stayed on this ship, she was no better than a pirate. Worse than a pirate in the Central Command’s eyes. A traitor.
Where else could she go? What would she do? The label would follow her to any ship. The only captains who would take her now would be actual pirates and cutthroats. Was that all that mattered? What of her soul? What kind of person would she be to continue serving under Drummond Bayne, a man who no longer garnered her faith and respect the way he once did.
She projected herself into a dozen futures. Some of them brought tears to her eyes because she knew they would never come true. Captain of her own UNS ship. Admiral. A family on a peaceful forest moon, watching the stars from the front porch as crickets sang.
When the exodus ended, more than half the crew had left.
But she had not moved.
Bayne turned around to see his dwindled crew. He nodded, swallowing hard to keep everything down. Then he was captain again, not a heartbroken man. “The rest of you will assist in seeing the others off. Help them pack their things. Assemble ration packs. Say your good-byes.”
The remaining crew dispersed, a heavy feeling causing them to move slowly. Sig tugged on Delphyne’s arm, encouraging her to leave and give Bayne, whose knuckles were turning white as he squeezed his hands into fists, some space. She told him that she would catch up.
Then it was just the two of them, Delphyne and Bayne. They were rarely alone. They had no reason to be. But she was never uncomfortable around him. Not until now.
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“I need to know something, sir.” She surprised herself with the strength of her voice. “I need to know what our mission is. And how we plan on achieving it.”
Bayne squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“Then you better.”
His head snapped up, fresh anger flaring in his eyes. “I’ll remind you who you’re talking to, Lieutenant.”
“Who’s that?”
“Your captain!” His anger finally boiled over and rushed out of his mouth in a hot wave.
So, too, did Delphyne’s. She hadn’t realized it was there, bubbling below the surface, an anger to match Bayne’s. “My captain would never have put me in this position. Forcing me to choose, to question my loyalty. To compromise myself. I am a damn good sailor, sir, and I have been nothing but dutiful and loyal to you.” The lava in her voice began to cool and crack. “I’ve done nothing to deserve this. You have betrayed me.”
Bayne looked at her in a way he never had. Eyes wide but laser-focused. Completely at a loss, like he’d just stepped off the ship in the middle of the vacuum.
“Worse,” Delphyne continued. “You betrayed yourself. A man to whom I pledged my loyalty. A man I served. A man I believed to be honorable. I don’t know if you’re that man anymore.”
He remained silent but did not look away from her.
She did not look away from him. “You’ve done things since setting on this path that don’t become an officer of the Navy. In following you, I’ve done things that don’t become an officer of the Navy. If I continue to follow you, will I do more?”
Bayne shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Will you continue to do more?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you guarantee that you won’t do anything that would besmirch the honor of this ship and everyone serving aboard it?”
Bayne paused. He shook his head again. “No.”
A shudder ran through Delphyne. A tremor that threatened to shake her apart. “Then, Captain, I am afraid that I can no longer serve as your lieutenant.”
The tremor ran along the floor and up through Bayne’s leg, shaking him to his core. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Her eyes fell to the floor. “I will report to Mao right away so that my name can be removed from the ship’s ledger.” She turned on her heel and marched toward the exit.
“Wait, Delphyne,” Bayne called, stopping her cold. “Before you go, I’ve one last thing to ask of you.”
7
Present…
Bayne’s breath caught in his throat. It forced its way out when he’d forgotten to keep breathing. “Hep, patch the call to my quarters.” He sprinted off the bridge before Hep could answer or Mao could object.
He didn’t care to hear either. He hadn’t heard Delphyne’s voice in months. He knew there was a chance he’
d never speak to her again. Since the moment she’d stepped off the ship, Bayne had tried to convince himself that it was only temporary. He tried to convince himself that everything was temporary, while still living as though this was his life now. The life of a fugitive. Constant vigilance. Prepared to move and fight at all times. To live any other way would mean death.
He didn’t slow until he reached his quarters, almost slamming into his door before it had time to open. He didn’t take time to catch his breath before opening the channel to Delphyne.
Her visage appeared on the monitor mounted on the wall over his desk.
“Lieutenant,” he said. He caught himself and corrected when he noticed the twinge of pain the word brought to her face. “Delphyne, it’s good to see you.”
She did not appear to feel the same. “You can’t contact me now. What happened to the protocol?”
“You know how I am for protocol.” He smirked. He fell into his old pattern, like seeing a classmate for the first time in years and becoming the person you were in school. His roguish behavior was not as charming as it once was.
“You’re going to get me killed,” Delphyne snapped in a hushed voice. “If they ever trace this signal, find out I’m talking to you, then we’re all dead.”
“Hep is scrambling the signal. You taught him well.”
Delphyne’s eyes flicked about, like she was scanning the horizon for predators. “Just get on with it. What do you need?”
The change in her demeanor was startling, but not wholly unwelcome. Bayne had only ever known her as an officer. Even when on leave, she maintained a certain decorum in his presence. She made no effort to that effect now.
“I need you to set up a meeting,” Bayne said.
“No.” Her response was immediate and concrete.
Bayne reeled from the rejection. “Delphyne, it’s why I asked you to do this. Why I set you up with the identity architect.”
“Aside from providing me with a fresh start, you mean,” she said.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 21
