Bayne wanted to believe that, if only for Jeska’s sake. He didn’t want to be the one to shatter her illusions of the honorable Navy serving an honorable purpose. “I wish you had any say over that, Jeska. I really do.”
He muted the comm. “Graeme, chart a course as deep into the Black as you can. Richmond,” he said, contacting the engineering room. “Begin venting the nitrogen tanks. Delphyne, target our current location with our bow guns.”
He felt the curious eyes cling to him. Delphyne’s weren’t curious but cautioning. He realized then how much he’d missed her presence on the bridge. She was always a reminder of the line, whether or not she was able to keep him from crossing it.
“Keep a bead on the Glint,” Bayne ordered. “It’ll try to work its way behind us. If it moves past our nine o’clock, put a shot across its bow. We need to maintain an open route out of here.”
Mao stepped to Bayne’s side and spoke so only he could hear. “What’s our mandate here, Captain? Are we preparing to kill fellow sailors?”
We aren’t sailors anymore, Bayne thought. It had become like a mantra. “We are preparing to do whatever we need to survive.”
He unmuted the comm to Jeska. “Captain Jeska, I am prepared to take you up on your offer.”
Jeska’s surprise was almost audible over the comm. As was that of the bridge crew.
“I’m glad you’ve discovered some sense since we last sailed together, Drummond,” she said. “I’ve no desire to end this the way brass wants it to end.”
If Bayne allowed himself some humility, he could admit that Mara Jeska was the best frontier captain in the Navy. But, like most frontier captains, she was also loose-lipped and either naïve of protocol or blatantly ignored it. She wasn’t even aware of the information that she let slip. She probably wasn’t even aware that she had information to let slip.
The Navy brass wanted Bayne dead. They needed to allow him the opportunity to surrender so that there could be an investigation and a trial and a public horse and pony show. But they just wanted him dead and the whole thing swept back under the rug where it belonged. They may not have given the order directly, but they made it known, subtly, that if the Blue never made it back to Central, that would be mission accomplished.
The knowledge didn’t change Bayne’s plan, but it eased his guilt about it. “We all have to grow up and open our eyes sometime, Mara.” It was both an admittance and accusation.
“Then power down all weapons systems,” Jeska ordered. “Only essential life support functions. All crew are to be disarmed upon our arrival. We will take your crew aboard the Illuminate for holding. Bigby’s crew will pilot your ship home.”
Bayne sighed so Jeska could hear. Part of the show. “Couldn’t you switch that around? Bigby’s a terrible pilot, but he’s got better booze.”
Jeska laughed. Then she ended the communication.
“Put the engines to sleep,” Bayne said. “Keep them running, but low enough that the Illuminate can’t detect them.”
“Low enough that they can kick back on without an initiation sequence?” Mao said, knowing the answer. Because he’d seen it done before.
“Say what you will about them,” Bayne said to Mao. “But pirates are a clever bunch.”
Wex Shill had done this very thing to them when they tried to apprehend him so many months ago. Bayne thought he complied by powering down and waiting for Bayne to board. But their weapon systems were just in a low-powered state, so they appeared offline. Once the Blue’s shuttle was en route, they fired up their guns. Though Mao must have thought it a cowardly trick, just the sort pirates would think up, it was an ingenious ruse, and Bayne would be a fool not to employ it.
Bayne addressed the bridge. “Once the shuttles are underway from the Illuminate and the Glint, we’ll detonate the gas. It’ll be a quick flash in the pan, nothing that will cause any significant damage to their ships, just provide us enough cover to make an escape.”
The bridge crew offered a cold reception.
“They are still our brothers-in-arms,” Bayne said. “I’ve no desire to harm them. Once we get this mess cleaned up, you will sail beside them again.” His gut tightened with the lie.
Silence engulfed the bridge as the crew watched and waited. Even the ship went quiet as the engines slept. After a few minutes that felt like hours, a voice came over the inter-ship comm channel. “Shuttles away.”
Through the viewscreen, Bayne watched four shuttles approach. Each one was big enough to carry three away teams of five. They were joined by a larger transport meant to escort the Blue’s crew back to the Illuminate. That transport likely held another five to seven teams of five. Over a hundred armed sailors coming to take his ship. If allowed to dock, there was no way he could stop them.
But they wouldn’t be allowed to dock. They crossed the threshold, getting close enough to the vented gas cloud that it would cause no damage now if it detonated.
“Delphyne, fire the forward batteries—”
Before Bayne could finish his order, Delphyne cut him off. “Another ship just appeared on screen!”
A giant red dot ate up a portion of the map directly behind the ship, cutting off their escape route and surrounding them.
“It’s the Forager!” Delphyne shouted.
Captain Horne’s ship. The other Navy trailblazer. The Forager was one of the fastest in the Navy but not built for combat. Horne was a scout, mostly, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t punch a few holes in Bayne’s hull.
Bayne felt a noose tighten around his neck. It stopped him from breathing. From speaking.
“Captain!” Mao said, jarring Bayne from his stupor. “Orders?”
The shuttles inched closer with every second. Closer to the gas cloud. If the Blue lit it too late, the shuttles, and everyone on them, would be torn apart. But if Bayne did nothing, those sailors would board the ship, and it would all be over. Despite Jeska’s intentions, Bayne knew he would never see the inside of a courtroom. He would never tell his story. The massacred Rangers would never get justice.
“Sir, the shuttles are ten seconds from crossing into the blast radius of the gas cloud,” Delphyne said.
Taking out the shuttles would keep them from being boarded, and maybe cause enough of a distraction that they could maneuver around the Forager before Horne had time to react. But with the blood of Navy sailors on their hands, Bayne doubted his crew would sail with him much longer.
But that was if he waited.
“Target the cloud and fire. Now!” His sudden fierceness caught the bridge crew off guard.
Moa tried to reason with him, as he always did. “Sir, I think we should—"
“I don’t care what you think,” Bayne said. “Fire now!”
“They’re too close!” Mao shouted back.
Delphyne didn’t move.
“Fire now, goddamnit!”
Mao grabbed Bayne’s arm and spun the captain around to face him. Bayne’s hand immediately reached for the blade on his hip. The black blade. Malevolence.
“We cannot fire on those shuttles,” Mao said, his throat tight, voice coming out like bear guarding its den.
“The shuttles have crossed into the blast zone,” Delphyne said.
Bayne’s eyes narrowed to pinpoints. His fingers laced around the handle of his sword. “We wouldn’t have if you’d done as ordered.” He shook free of Mao’s grip and marched toward Delphyne. “Get up, Lieutenant. You’re relieved of duty.”
She moved aside like she was stepping out of the way of an oncoming train.
Bayne took her seat. He hadn’t sat at a gunner’s station in a long time, but they hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed since man first picked up a rock. Point it at what you want dead and start throwing.
He punched in the coordinates. And he fired.
Two torpedoes launched straight for the cloud.
The bridge crew inhaled sharply and held a collective breath.
The comm channel to the Illuminate spark
ed to life. Jeska sounded like an air raid siren. “Are you out of your mind? Call those off right now!”
Bayne didn’t respond. He cut off the channel before anyone else could. He was the only one on the bridge that mattered now. He’d wanted to share more with his crew. Let them in. Let them be part of the decisions. It was all their lives on the line. But they proved they couldn’t be trusted. He would do it himself.
“Captain Bayne, I must insist—”
Bayne cut Mao off without turning to look at him. His voice was cold and quiet, like a moonless night on a winter pond. “Another word out of you, XO, and I will carry out your sentence right here and now.”
The torpedoes and shuttles raced toward one another. Toward the point of no return. The point where Bayne became the story they’d written about him. The traitor. The pirate. When everything that he’d made of himself, the life he’d carved out of nothing, was erased.
But what choice did he have? Give up, get stabbed in his cell, and have the story written before his body was cold? Stay alive, become the dread pirate, reveal the truth, watch them tear each other apart? Maybe there was a third option.
He heard Mao’s footsteps behind. Steady even now. He heard the clasp undone on Mao’s blaster. The metal slide against the leather of his holster.
“The shuttles are veering off,” Graeme said.
The company of shuttles and the transport split and veered in opposite directions, steering toward either side of the oncoming torpedoes. Their new trajectories took them outside the blast zone.
That was when Bayne detonated the torpedoes.
The gas cloud burst like a balloon, a fireball started as a spark and rolled outwards until it was one big ball of fire. The shuttles were swallowed in it. For the length of a breath, they were gone. In that moment, Bayne flickered between redeemable and irredeemable, the man he knew he was and the man they believed him to be.
The glare of the explosion faded. Through the bright spots dancing across Bayne’s vision, he saw the shuttles and the transport, still intact. They suffered some damage, and a few looked to be disabled, but they were in one piece, as were, presumably, the sailors inside.
Without wasting a moment, Bayne targeted the Forager. The shuttles were between the Illuminate and Glint and the Royal Blue, dirtying up the Navy’s clean shot enough that Bayne knew they wouldn’t risk it. Jeska would likely task Bigby with recovering the disabled shuttles while she plotted a course around them.
Horne and the Forager would engage. But Horne was a scout captain, not as experienced in combat, and the Forager was a scout ship, light and quick, not meant for ship-to-ship engagement.
Bayne let loose a torpedo, aimed at the starboard engine. The shields would protect the Forager from major damage, but the impact would rattle Horne, giving Bayne the precious window he needed to escape.
“Graeme, drop us ten degrees,” Bayne ordered. “Take us under the Forager. Engineering, prep a hard burn.”
The Forager appeared to climb as the Blue dove. The Forager’s starboard engine was in clear view as the torpedo hit. The cloud of super-heated vapor and sparks had yet to dissipate before the Blue had dipped beneath the Forager, taking Horne’s ship out of view.
“Hard burn ready,” someone from engineering said.
Before Bayne could give the order, Delphyne shouted from the monitor station. “Incoming torpedo!”
The Illuminate had barely cleared the disabled shuttles when it shot off a Hail Mary. Bayne should have known that Jeska wouldn’t let him go without a fight. Not after attacking her people. Not after lying to her.
Bayne suddenly saw double as the ship shook. The torpedoes couldn’t have reached them already. Whatever hit them was closer. And it was still coming. A barrage.
“The Forager is firing its starboard gun batteries,” Delphyne shouted over the rumble. “Shields are holding.”
It wasn’t enough to cause significant damage, but it did slow them down.
“Initiate hard burn,” Bayne ordered. “Get us the hell out of here!”
The ship lurched as fuel flooded the engines and pushed them to capacity. Bayne felt his lungs press against his back, his heart squeeze, his eyes sink further into his skull.
Then he felt the rumble of a torpedo colliding with the aft of the Royal Blue.
16
“Damage report!” The words barely scraped out of Bayne’s throat, the G-force trying to press them back down into his belly.
“Torpedo struck our rear,” Delphyne said. “No significant hull damage.”
“Then why are we slowing down?” Mao asked.
Bayne radioed engineering.
“Maintaining hard burn,” an engineering officer replied. “But that last hit disrupted the fuel injection system. It only pumped enough in to get us about halfway to our target.”
“Bring up a map of the area,” Bayne said as he left the gunner’s station and took his place back in the captain’s chair.
Delphyne raised a display of their projected drop point.
It was a familiar area, but one that put a pit in Bayne’s stomach. It was familiar to him and to Jeska, Horne, Bigby, and even the Byers Clan. It would provide him little, if any, cover.
“Any way to juice the engines a little more?” Bayne asked his engineers. “Get us a little further?”
“No, sir. We can’t prep the injection process until the engines cool down.”
It was difficult, but not impossible, to track a ship while it was in a hard burn. If Jeska didn’t have them now, she would shortly after they returned to a normal speed. The Forager was faster than the Blue, and the others weren’t far behind. They wouldn’t be able to prep another jump before the Navy was on top of them. And with Jeska now prepped for a fight, Bayne wouldn’t be able to fend them off.
When you can’t fight, and you can’t run, there is only one option left.
“We need a place to hide,” Bayne said.
“Or we could surrender,” Mao said.
“I don’t have time for you right now, Taliesin,” Bayne answered. The captain pushed himself out of his chair. The G-force had lessened as the ship slowed, and the artificial gravity on board had recalibrated enough that he could move. It felt like only a large man standing on his chest now instead of an elephant.
He stood over Graeme’s shoulder, looking down at the navigational display in front of the nav officer. The drop point was mostly empty space. Nothing that would provide natural cover. So, maybe it was better to hide in plain sight.
“There,” Bayne said, pointing to a small moon.
“Sir, that’s—”
“I know what it is,” Bayne said, cutting Graeme off. “Chart the course.”
Bayne walked off the bridge without looking at a single member of his crew. He walked down the corridor, sweat forming on his brow from the effort to keep his balance when everything seemed to be working against him.
“Hep,” Bayne said, activating his personal comm. “Where are you?”
“Shuttle bay. Prepping in case we need to bail.”
“We won’t. Meet me in the comms room. I need you to open a channel for me.”
By Bayne’s internal clock, they had just minutes, three at most, until they came out of hard burn. It would be ten more before Jeska had their location. He had less than fifteen minutes to make this happen.
Hep arrived at the comms room just as Bayne did. Bayne handed Hep a slip of paper. “Open a channel on this frequency. I need it in the next five minutes.”
Hep unfolded the paper. His eyes went wide at the letters and numbers, seemingly trying to decode them, find the true meaning hidden among them, because they couldn’t possibly be real. “I know this frequency. This is—”
“I know what it is. Just do it.”
“No,” came a voice from down the hall. “Do not do it.”
Now it was Bayne trying to decode what he was seeing, trying to find meaning in the scene before him. Mao was flanked by Sigurd and Delphyne.
He wore a look that Bayne had never seen. One of pure anger, of hate.
“Stand down, XO,” Bayne said.
Pain flashed across Mao’s face. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. I can’t allow you to make that call.”
“Allow me?” Bayne parroted Mao’s words, lacing them with poison. “You don’t allow me to do anything on my ship.”
“We’ve followed you through hell, sir,” Mao said. “We’ve stepped in line as you made one bad decision after another because we had faith you would lead us through as you always have. But this?” Mao spread his arms, gesturing to everything around them. A life on the run from those they swore to serve. And, now, a looming alliance with those they swore to bring to justice. “You want to bring us to Ore Town?”
“It’s the only option we’ve got left,” Bayne said.
“It isn’t,” Mao answered. “You could surrender. You could end all of this right now. You’ve sailed us too far into the Black on this one, Drummond. You need to bring your people back to the light.”
“There is no light!” The anger shot out of Bayne. “There never was. My entire tenure with the Navy, the reason I joined up, the reason I sailed under its banner, was all a lie. It never existed. I betrayed the one real thing I ever had to serve a lie. To serve murderers and thieves. I’m in the dark? I’ve finally stepped out of it, Mao. For the first time since leaving the Rangers, I’m back on the right side.”
Bayne ripped the Navy emblem off his chest and threw it at Mao’s feet. He pointed at the tattered piece of cloth. “They’re the ones who’ve sailed too far into the Black.”
With a flick of Mao’s thumb, he undid the clasp securing his blaster in its holster. He undid years of service, of friendship. Years as Executive Officer Taliesin Mao, faithful officer of the United Navy.
“Captain,” Mao said. “You are relieved of duty.”
17
Hep was frozen. He looked at Mao over Bayne’s shoulder. Sig and Delphyne at Mao’s side. The blaster rifle slung over Sig’s shoulder, as it often was, now carried with it a sense of warning. It was a snake coiled and ready to strike.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 26
