“I’m sorry, Chief,” Bayne said as they rounded a turn in the corridor. “Never meant to put you in this position.”
“All due respect,” Sig said. “Shut up.”
“Bet you’ve been wanting to say that for a while.”
Sig spun Bayne around and slammed him against the wall. Wilco made a move from Sig’s blind spot. Keeping the blaster to Bayne’s chest, Sigurd shot his free arm out and slammed the backside of his fist into Wilco’s nose. The boy’s eyes filled with tears as his nose filled with blood. Then Sig drove his foot into Wilco’s chest, knocking him onto his back and putting distance between them.
Bayne gestured for Wilco to stay down.
Sig pressed his blaster hard into Bayne’s chest as he leaned in close. “I followed you into hell on numerous occasions. Plenty of times I thought I might not make it back out. I never questioned you. I always knew we were doing what needed doing to rid the Deep Black of pirate scum. Anarchists who thrived off terrorizing hardworking folks. Miners who carved a life out of nothing, doing shit work no one else wanted to do while Byers execs padded their pockets.”
The barrel of Sig’s blaster felt like it was seconds from punching straight through Bayne’s chest.
“And I kept the faith long after others started questioning,” Sig continued. “I would have kept marching right through hell with you. Until Triseca.”
Mention of the station caught Bayne by surprise.
Sig’s anger flowed from him like a hot wave. “You lied to us. I walked into something I didn’t understand. You used me like a weapon. You pointed me at your target and pulled the trigger.” The blood pulsed in Sig’s face, turning his eyes red and making the veins in his forehead bulge. “I am no one’s weapon.”
He grabbed Bayne by the collar and shoved him down the hall. They walked the rest of the way in silence.
Sig slammed the brig door, locking Bayne and Wilco inside. He paused before stepping outside to keep guard. “Delphyne’s mad for different reasons, if you care.” He spoke with his back to Bayne. “You betrayed all of us by using us in your own personal war. But you got her to betray herself.”
Bayne fell against the wall and slid down to the floor as Sig left.
Wilco hurled curses against each wall of his cage. He was a wild animal suddenly put in a box. “I’m going to kill him. Righteous son of a... I’ll stick him right in his damn ribs.”
“Shut up,” Bayne snapped.
Wilco cocked his head, confused.
“Sigurd and Mao and Delphyne, all of them, they did what they had to. They’re right. I did betray them. They’re Navy. I’m not.”
“The Navy is going to space us. I’ll do what I have to.”
Bayne looked up at Wilco, a calm confidence on his face. “They aren’t to be harmed.”
“Like I have the option anyway. We’re stuck in here.”
Bayne held up his hand and showed Wilco the access key he’d taken off Sig. As he showed off their means of escape, Bayne wondered what would come of it. They were still trapped on a ship, which was locked on the opposite side of the planetary defense shield that he wanted to be on.
Even if he managed to get to Ore Town, what we would he do? Parallax had Ayala. Would he abandon her to whatever Parallax had planned for her? Did she deserve anything less?
One problem at a time.
He needed a way off the Blue.
Bayne reached through the bars and swiped the access card across the lock. It clicked, and the door swung open. As he and Wilco approached the door to the main corridor, Bayne grabbed Wilco by the arm. “No one dies.”
Wilco curled his lips into a smile. “Everyone dies.”
Bayne squeezed the boy’s arm until he relented. Bayne counted down. Wilco wrenched the door open. Bayne slid out like a shadow and wrapped his arm around Sig’s neck, pressing his forearm against the chief’s windpipe. “I really am sorry,” Bayne whispered.
Sig fell unconscious to the floor. They stripped him of his weapons before moving on, Bayne taking the blaster and Wilco the knife tucked in Sig’s boot. They moved silently through the corridor, never encountering any opposition. The ship was still running on a skeleton crew and they were all at their battle stations.
Bayne’s head began to swim as they worked their way past engineering. The mix of fumes and déjà vu made him sway like he was halfway through a bottle of rum. He braced himself with a hand against the wall.
Positively-charged air.
Bayne stopped. He made for the door to engineering. He remembered the bulky, metal slab that separated the engineering department on the Black Hole from the rest of the ship. He slid the door open a crack and peeked inside.
Hep stood over the power core of the engine. The source of all its power. A volatile reaction swirled inside the meter-long canister that, if breached, would destroy the entire ship.
He remembered the door on the Black Hole again. Watching it shut after Parallax stepped inside. Seeing what was behind Parallax.
His head swam again, flooded with realization. He slid the door shut and ran down the hall toward the shuttle bay. They snuck in before any of the crew and hid in a panel along the far wall. No one knew this ship better than Bayne. A fact he was irritated to have to remind Wilco of.
The boy’s head seemed to be somewhere else. He wasn’t the most focused person to begin with, but he now had to be pulled along, a chore Bayne couldn’t tolerate now. He had to remind Wilco to shut his mouth when the crew arrived to prep the bay for an incoming shuttle. He nearly pistol-whipped the boy when he dropped his knife. Luckily, the shuttle was docking at the time, so the sound of it hitting the floor couldn’t be heard over the engines.
Delphyne welcomed the small delegation from the Illuminate. Jeska was the ranking captain in the campaign. With Ayala out of commission, she was calling the shots. Her XO—a tall, broad man named Calibor—led three sailors off the shuttle.
Bayne couldn’t help but feel some pride watching Delphyne greet them and give a status update. She was a natural officer. Mao would be a fool not to make her executive officer now that he was captain.
The ease of the thought caught him off guard. How readily he could admit that his time as captain was done. That this may be the last time he stepped foot on the Blue.
Delphyne led Calibor and his team away. They would head for the brig to collect him, bring him to Jeska so he could be secured and carted off to Centel. Part of Bayne wanted to allow it just so he could get close enough to Tirseer to stick a knife in her ribs. But there would be time for that later.
Once the bay was clear, Bayne and Wilco boarded the shuttle.
“Strap in,” Bayne said. “This is going to be a hell of a ride. Possibly a very short one.”
A restrained voice caught both Wilco and Bayne by surprise. “I could see that it lasts long enough.”
Wilco drew his knife instinctively, and then looked horrified to see to whose throat he held the blade against.
“Going somewhere?” Hep said, blaster drawn.
16
The metal must have been cold against his neck, though Hep could not feel anything but heat. His skin felt like it was on fire, like his heart was pumping magma through his veins. His mind was focused singularly on the hand holding the knife, the arms to which the hand was attached, the body to which the arm belonged.
His friend, his brother, Wilco.
“You part of this?” Wilco’s face was tight, his ever-present smile, full of cunning and viciousness, was impossible.
Hep didn’t need to answer. Bayne answered for him. “You disabled the engines? And transmitted the message to Ayala?”
Hep nodded. He thought he saw a flash of pride on Bayne’s face before it faded into irritation.
“Can’t make up your damn mind, can you?” Wilco said. His eyes drifted to the knife still in his hand, held to Hep’s neck, then back to Hep’s face, hardened, the knife not moving.
“You going to kill me?” Hep sounded mat
ter of fact. Surprisingly, he felt that way as well. This was a problem that needed solving. There was a solution somewhere. He just needed to see it.
“No.” It was Bayne who answered. That gave Hep no assurance, as Wilco had yet to move. “But we aren’t going to let you stand in our way either.”
“And what path is it you’re taking?” Hep asked. “If I don’t know where you’re going, how can I stand in your way?” He studied Bayne’s face. It looked familiar. “I’m not the only one who can’t make up my mind.”
Wilco stepped closer to him, the knife did not move. “I’ve always known where I’m going. And I see now that you’re in my way. Move.”
Bayne grabbed Wilco’s arm. His expression suddenly became curious. He moved Wilco aside so he could speak to Hep with nothing between them. “You’re an engineer.”
“Not really. I just—”
“Wasn’t asking,” Bayne said. “I’ve seen what you can do. You’re an engineer. You know more about the technical aspects of making a ship run than I do. Do you know much about the engine’s power cores?”
Hep shrugged. He felt like he was being quizzed, a drastic and jarring change from the knife he had to his throat moments ago. “Yeah, I guess.”
Bayne was quiet a moment, seemingly running through a plan in his mind. “He’s coming with us.”
Wilco made to object, but Bayne cut him off. “Stow your personal shit right now. Something bigger’s going on.” Bayne boarded the shuttle, apparently confident enough that the two boys wouldn’t murder each other.
The tension between them was thick and noxious, a poison gas in the air.
“You say you know where you’re going,” Hep said. “Guess I’m following.” He finally holstered his blaster.
Wilco slid his knife into his belt. “That’s your problem. You always thought you could.”
They boarded the shuttle and left the Royal Blue.
“We’ve got a few minutes at best before anyone realizes we took this thing,” Bayne said. “I need you to send a message before that happens.” He pointed at Hep.
“I assume it’s more than a simple transmission, then?”
“I need you to get word to Ore Town. Let them know to open up a hole in the planetary defense shield so we can get through. But the Navy can’t get wind of it.”
That meant routing the message through a satellite, cloning the pirates’ transmission signal. Or just cloning the Royal Blue’s transmission signal. Ore Town would be expecting a message from them and the Navy booted them off their official channels after Triseca.
Hep sat behind the comms console. It felt inappropriate to feel pleased at how much this relatively simple task seemed like magic to Bayne and Wilco. Once he opened the channel with the cloned signal, Bayne recorded the message.
The response from Ore Town came quickly with coordinates for the back door through the shield. Bayne had barely punched the coordinates into the nav computer before the proximity alarm sounded.
“Guess they’ve figured it out,” Wilco said.
“Strap in,” Bayne said, excitement in his voice. He pushed the throttle. The shuttle wasn’t meant for speed. It was a simple transport. Little thrust. No weapons. Minimal shielding. A direct hit from either of the two single-pilot fighters on their tail would turn them to vapor.
Luckily, the back door wasn’t far.
“Keep the door closed,” Bayne said to the shield tech on Ore Town. “Until I give the word.”
Hep could see why, even now, as Bayne straddled two worlds, not fully committing to either, he drew people to him. His enthusiasm for the lifestyle, the thrill that exuded from him like a perfume, watching him twist a situation from cunning alone—it was all magnetic. It almost made you forget that this game of chicken he played with every authority he encountered put your life on the line alongside his.
The shuttle cut through space like a dull knife through an oven-fresh roll. Hep watched the two red dots on the monitor close the distance between them with little effort. Another ten seconds and the fighters would be in range. Had they been given the order to kill or capture? Bayne had long since spent whatever goodwill he had with the other captains. They wouldn’t put themselves out to keep him alive.
“Coming up on it,” Bayne said to the shield tech. “Now.”
A section of the shimmering blue shield dissolved just meters before the shuttle slammed into it.
“We’re through,” Bayne said. “Close it.”
The shield became whole behind them. Just in time for the two fighters to crash into it. They erupted in bursts of heat and light, and then they were gone. Just gas and dust.
If Bayne felt any remorse for the dead sailors, it didn’t show on his face. He continued as if nothing had changed. For him, maybe nothing had.
“You’re clear to land in Ore Town,” a voice said over the radio. “You are to disembark and report to the command center immediately.”
Bayne switched off the radio without replying.
The move seemed typical of Bayne, dismissive of authority, but there was an underlying element that Hep could smell but not quite pinpoint. That feeling was only intensified when the shuttle broke from the charted path to the Ore Town docks. Instead of approaching the small moon, they circled around behind it.
Wilco didn’t seem to be any more in the know as to Bayne’s plan, which didn’t make Hep feel any better. If anything, it only made Hep more certain that Bayne was making this up as he went. Which offered no comfort. An improvising Bayne was a dangerous Bayne.
“Cap?” Wilco said, clearly uncomfortable that he wasn’t in on the plan. Hep had watched Wilco grow close to Bayne the last month. He enjoyed the proximity to power. He always did. He enjoyed being the buffer between Hep and people like Wex Shill because it put him close to power.
Hep understood that now. Seeing Wilco covered in blood, hearing how he killed those Byers sailors, it put the past in perspective. He saw Wilco not from the lens of the boy he protected, but as any other person in the world. Any of the infinite people Wilco blamed for the state of his life. And that was when he saw his brother for who he really was: a pirate.
“Ore Town’s down there. And the battle’s back that way. Where are we going?” Wilco tried to catch Bayne’s eye, but the captain stared straight ahead, silent, as though the black horizon held the answer to his question.
And it did. The answer crested around the edge of the moon. The massive battleship, the Black Hole, flagship of the Ore Town fleet and personal ship of the pirate lord Parallax. Dread clogged Hep’s insides. Sweat beaded on his brow and soaked his underarms.
He finally felt some semblance of comfort in his actions, like he belonged on the Royal Blue with Mao and Delphyne and had accepted that he and Wilco were on divergent paths. That made this all the worse, being pulled along to the last place in the universe he wanted to go.
Would Mao and Delphyne think he’d turned again? Would they think he was never truly with them, that he was biding his time until he could break Bayne and Wilco free and defect?
The thought of them counting Hep among the pirates made him feel ill.
Wilco seemed to be having the opposite reaction. He looked on both the ship and Bayne in awe. He leaned forward, trying to get as close as he could to the Black Hole.
Bayne piloted them around the aft of the ship, toward the shuttle bay. The doors opened like the mouth of a giant hell beast and swallowed them. Hep believed he would never escape.
The shuttled docked and powered down. Bayne took a deep breath before turning toward the boys, as if he knew they wouldn’t like what he was about to say. “Wilco, stay with the shuttle. Hep, you’re with me.”
They both objected in unison.
“I need you to guard this shuttle,” Bayne said to Wilco. “This is our way out.” He turned to Hep. “And I need an engineer.”
“Sir,” Wilco said. “All due respect, but what the hell is going on? You ain’t a captain anymore, so I ain’t exactly in th
e position to mutiny.”
“That’s true,” Bayne said. “I’m no longer a captain of the United Navy. Don’t exactly know if I’d count myself among Parallax’s people either. Hell, I don’t even have my own ship. I’m not acting on behalf of any authority. Which means you two need to make up your own damn minds.”
“About what?” Wilco’s voice was tight with frustration.
“I think Parallax is about to do something real stupid,” Bayne said. “And I aim to stop him.”
Wilco pressed his palms into his eyes until a dull ache pulsed through his head. “You aren’t with the Navy. You aren’t with Parallax. Who the hell are you with?”
“I’m a Ranger, boy. I’m on my own.”
Wilco dropped his hands and watched the colors dance across his vision. He dropped into the nearest chair and stabbed his dagger in the arm of it.
Bayne signaled for Hep to follow. “We move quick and quiet.”
And they did.
The crew of the Black Hole was so frenzied by the situation that they hadn’t the time or energy to focus on two faces wandering about the ship. Most knew Bayne, anyway, and wouldn’t assume he’d come to throw a wrench in their captain’s plans.
As they exited the elevator onto the engineering floor, Hep slowed his gait. “What is Parallax going to do?” Bayne didn’t slow to match Hep’s speed, instead increasing the distance between them. “If you expect me to help stop him, I need to know.”
Bayne didn’t stop until they reached the massive metal doors with red lettering. Engineering, it said, though it felt out of place, like a wall built in the middle of a room. “We need to get through here.”
Hep folded his arms across his chest in silent protest.
Bayne glowered at him but didn’t want to waste the time in arguing. “Smell the air. Taste it. That positive energy, like we’re swimming in electricity.”
Hep moved his tongue around his mouth, suddenly unable to not taste it.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 35
