“Yeah, well, I just naturally assumed you all had abandoned us in here since it’s been over two hours.”
“Same,” Horus said.
“This is my ship,” Hep said. “Why would I abandon it?”
“Is it, though?” Byrne said. “Still your ship?”
Hep’s face grew hot with anger. An irrational anger heavy with years of baggage. Byrne stepped back, afraid to get burned by it. “This is and always will be my ship. Doesn’t matter who else comes and goes, it will always be mine.”
Byrne raised her hands, half in defeat, half in defense.
Hep focused on unclenching his fists. “I take it you haven’t heard anything then?”
“Just sitting here in the dark. Dr. Hauser hasn’t made contact either. She and Akari were supposed to check in by now. Akari’s a stickler, so something must be keeping her from calling. I’m starting to think this was a bad idea. I wish I’d said something before we tried it. Oh, wait.”
“Enough,” Hep snapped. The only thing worse than making a mistake was having your mistake pointed out again and again. “This isn’t done yet. First thing we need to do is disengage the drive locks. Then we can contact Hauser and Akari.”
Horus jumped as if startled. He looked at his comm watch. “Uh oh.”
Hep pressed his palms to his temples, trying to hold his head together. “What?”
Horus looked at Byrne. “Did you just send me a message?”
Byrne blushed. “Oh, right, the comm watch. About that.” She pushed up both sleeves to reveal bare wrists.
“He took it?” Hep asked.
“He’s got quick hands,” Byrne said.
Hep held out his hand. Horus handed over the watch but seemed reluctant to let it go. As soon as it was free from his fingers, he took a step back. Hep’s eyes bulged and his heart raced. “Everyone, to the cargo bay now.” He ran out of the galley before anyone could answer. They yelled after him as he ran, but he couldn’t make out their words over the pounding of blood in his ears.
Byrne finally grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around once he stopped in the cargo bay. “Captain, what the hell is happening?” Hep shoved the watch in her face, which immediately drained of color. “Shit.”
“Armed and at the ready,” Hep said as he punched the button lowering the gangplank. “We’ve got hostiles incoming.” As the gangplank lowered and shed light on the situation outside the ship, Hep drew his weapon and debated who to shoot. At last count, there was no one outside he wouldn’t mind shooting.
The gangplank slammed down on the deck of the station. Wilco and his team charged at them, followed closely by a dozen Elmore Syndicate soldiers. “Right on time,” Wilco yelled as he ran up the gangplank. “You’re lacking in nearly every aspect that matters, but punctuality is not one of them.”
“Your plan has gone off the rails in every aspect,” Hep shot back as he also literally shot back at the attacking soldiers.
“Adaptability,” Wilco said as he ducked for cover into the ship’s hold. “Add that to the areas in which you fail miserably.”
An aging man stooped beside Wilco. He extended his hand to Hep. “You the man flying me out of here? Pleasure. Name’s Edi Shankar.”
Wilco slapped Shankar’s hand down. “I’m the one busting you out, not this wet blanket. Any handshakes of gratitude are to be reserved for me and me alone.” Wilco looked to Hep. “Now, perhaps you can exhibit some use in making your way to the bridge and flying us out of here?”
“No, I can’t.”
Wilco threw up his hands. “Yet again you prove my point.”
“I can’t because whatever you just pulled inside, you didn’t pull as well as you thought. The syndicate hacked the ship and activated the drive locks. We need to access a station terminal to turn them off.”
“Blame me,” Wilco said. “Classic. Kurda, Trapper, we’re going back out. Some breathing room, if you would.”
Kurda laced her fingers behind her back and stretched her shoulders. “Yup.”
Horus gawked at her like a lovestruck teenager. “Mind if I tag along?”
She grunted but did not look at him. He took it as an invitation. Trapper Mayne went first, swinging his staff in a wide arc and knocking the rifles out of the hands of the nearest syndicate soldiers. Kurda followed. She smashed a soldier’s face with her fist and then caved in the chest of another with the New Viking warhammer clutched in her other hand. Horus smiled. He bellowed with joy when he joined the fray.
“Right then,” Wilco said, gesturing for Hep to take the lead. “After you.”
Hep seethed but swallowed his desire to punch Wilco in the nose. “Hold this position,” he ordered Byrne. “If the syndicate overruns us here, then we’re never getting off this station.”
Shankar raised a hand. “And what about me? It’s been a while, but I can fight. Kindly lend me a pistol and I’ll add a few holes to those gents.”
“No,” was all Hep said before charging out of the ship. He bristled as he passed under the name Dorian Black painted on the hull. “You’re paying to fix that.”
Wilco scoffed. “It’s better. You should leave it. Fair Wind? Even your ship is naïve.”
A soldier made a beeline for Hep and Wilco, his blaster held out front, ready to fire. Trapper’s staff came down and shattered the soldier’s wrist before he could pull the trigger.
“My crew is quite impressive, no?” Only Wilco could find time to brag in the middle of a fight.
“They’re only a crew if they’re manning a ship. As it stands, they’re more of a gang. Which I think suits you just fine.”
Wilco huffed. “And you think you’re suited to captain a ship? To order your crew about on death-defying missions?”
“No. I run a salvage ship. I don’t want anything to do with death-defying missions.”
“Of course you don’t. You are and forever will be a dreary wet rag.” Wilco quick-drew his sidearm and put a hole in an attacking soldier’s chest. “Such a bore.”
Hep ran around Wilco and activated a station terminal. A flashing icon prompted him for a password. “Dammit.”
“Another spectacular failure?”
“Shut up, Wilco.” Hep tapped feverishly on the keyboard, attempting every workaround he could think of to bypass the system. As he scoured the code, he found his way in. “Pick him up.” Hep pointed to the soldier Wilco just shot.
Wilco nudged the limp soldier with his foot. “He’s quite dead.”
“I know. Just get him up.” Hep grabbed one arm and Wilco the other. They dragged him to the terminal. Hep took the soldier by the back of the head, pressed his face to the screen, and lifted one of his eyelids with his finger. The screen flashed green a second later. Biometric scanners were built into the system as a backup. Hep dropped the body and set about locating the command protocol for the drive locks on his ship.
Hep flashed a satisfied smile. Wilco noticed it but did not comment.
“Done,” Hep said. “Ship’s free.”
Wilco drew his sword. Hep drew his. Hep refused to acknowledge the brother blades, black and blue, Malevolence and Benevolence. He ran forward instead, slashing a soldier across the chest. “Back on board! We’re leaving.”
Wilco’s team did not move. Wilco seemed to take great joy in that. “On me,” he said as he ran past them. Kurda and Trapper Mayne followed.
Once everyone was inside, the gangplank raised and placed them all behind protective cover. Hep didn’t stop running until he reached the bridge. Byrne was right behind him, not stopping until she was behind her station. She fired up the engines. Hep accessed the nav controls from his captain’s chair. In the few short days since leaving most of the crew on the Shayle moon, Hep and Byrne had become quite adept at piloting the ship on their own. They’d fallen into a rhythm where no orders needed to be issued, no questions asked. They knew their responsibilities and executed them. In a way, it felt more efficient than the traditional way of the captain making every
decision and delegating every action.
Horus, of course, was manning the rear guns. He never needed to be told to do that. Hep doubted he would do anything else if ordered, but he had no reason to order him to do otherwise. Horus was an excellent gunner, and he loved blowing things to pieces. He was a natural fit for quartermaster, which Hep had reluctantly offered him just days earlier.
Once the coordinates were entered and the engines were ready, Hep activated the drive and shot the ship out of the Elmore Syndicate station. He finally sat back in his chair and breathed with relief. Not ease, just relief. Though he was not in immediate danger of being shot, he was not at ease and couldn’t imagine a time when he ever would be again.
He activated the ship-wide comm. “Everyone to the bridge. Now.”
Within a minute, the bridge was full. It made the ship feel full even though Hep knew everybody on board was there, leaving the rest of the ship completely empty. The newcomer, Edi Shankar, milled around in a corner, looking awkward and shifty. Wilco leaned against the monitor wall, arms crossed in front of him, looking as if he couldn’t care less about anything in the world.
“We need to talk about what just happened,” Hep said, eyes lasered on Wilco.
“A successful mission,” Wilco said. “Well executed, team.”
“No,” Hep said. “Not well executed. That didn’t follow the plan at all.”
Wilco shrugged. “Well, it was my plan, so I saw fit to amend it.”
“You don’t get to do that. It may have been your plan, but this is my ship. I give the orders.”
Wilco shoved off the wall. His hand fell and swung back toward the dagger at the small of his back. “That right?” Byrne stepped forward to intercept, her fingers resting on the handle of her sidearm. Hep raised a hand to stop her. “I don’t take orders,” Wilco said. “Least of all from you. I’m here of my own accord.”
“And you can leave of your own accord,” Hep said. “Or you can be spaced.” Kurda tightened her grip on her hammer. “Or you can fall in line,” Hep added. “There is no room here for cross-purposes. We either have the same goal, or you find another ship.”
“And you find another smuggler,” Wilco said. He pointed at Shankar. “This one’s mine.”
Hep knew Wilco too well. He knew when Wilco was spinning his wheels, making idle threats trying to either buy time or save face. “Then take him and go. Have fun smuggling.” The last member of Wilco’s group appeared as if they walked through the wall, entering suddenly from the void of space. Cloak, they called it. Him, her, no one knew. Cloak never showed its face or spoke. Hep didn’t even know whether Wilco knew or not.
They didn’t need to speak, though. Presence alone was often enough, so vast and encompassing that words would have been redundant. Its intention was known. Wilco fell back against the wall, his arms again folding across his chest again. “Have it your way, then, cap’.” Hep’s cheeks burned with victory. “Proceed,” Wilco added. He couldn’t resist.
“Smuggler,” Hep said, looking at Shankar. The weathered man seemed confused. “You need to get us into Central. Any ideas on how to make that happen?”
Shankar silent mouthed some words but, even without sound, it was clear that he was at a loss.
“If it pleases the captain,” Wilco said. “Mr. Shankar has been held prisoner by the vile Elmore Syndicate for over a year. I’m sure this is all hitting him rather hard and fast. Perhaps a moment’s rest?” He bowed his head in sarcastic deference. “Your decision, of course. By your leave and all that.”
Hep stewed. He longed for the ability to appear to humble himself in one moment only to flip it around in the next. Wilco wielded his words as well as he wielded his sword. “Fine. One hour. Then we gather back here and figure out what the hell we’re doing.”
The crew looked dead on their feet. Wilco’s people followed him out. Horus wanted to go, judging by the pining in his eyes, but he chose to stay. He was a brute and often embodied the stereotype of the more violent than smart New Viking, but he was also surprisingly loyal. Hep dismissed his new quartermaster, feeling more confident than he had five minutes ago that he’d made the right decision in appointing him.
Only Byrne remained. Her jaw was tight with concern and her eyes sagged with fatigue. They’d been going without break since escaping the Inferni Cluster, hopping from one planet to the next, changing call signs and splashing the hull with paint, hoping to avoid the Navy, the Byers Clan, and the drove of bounty hunters now eager to collect the reward on their heads. They’d been successful so far, but the effort had taken its toll.
“Get some rest, Alenna. Might not get another chance for a while.”
Byrne stood at the comm station, swaying like a tree in the wind. “Not until I hear from Akari.”
Guilt churned Hep’s guts. He wouldn’t admit to himself that he’d welcomed the quiet on the ship. Even with Wilco and his team aboard, there was enough empty space that Hep had no trouble finding solitude. It was easy enough to convince himself that there was no cosmic threat looming over him, no impending upheaval of the galactic order that he was responsible for ushering in. No matter how he chose to proceed, he would have a hand in breaking the universe. His only goal was to limit the damage and, hopefully, leave it in a state where it could eventually be put back together. “She still hasn’t checked in?”
“No. Not a message on the black channel. Not even a blip on the tap frequency.” The backup to their backup. The tap frequency was a relic from the old days, before long-range comms were perfected. The only way to send a message into the Black was a modified version of Morse code, an even older relic.
“Have you hailed her?”
“Tried to. There’s been fluctuations of interference around Shayle. It comes and goes, but I don’t know whether my messages are getting through or not.”
“Keep trying,” Hep said. “We’re on our way back there now. Maybe it will get easier to make contact the closer we get.”
Byrne didn’t lift her eyes from the screen. Bloodshot and glossy, she looked on the verge of tears. She and Akari were close. The separation between captain and crew wasn’t as stark aboard a private salvager ship the way it was on a Navy ship, where sailors were nothing more than drones, breathing automatons who followed orders and nothing else. The crew didn’t snap to attention when Hep entered, but they weren’t exactly family either. He was their boss. He knew Byrne and Akari were close, but he was only just now glimpsing how close.
He walked to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “She’s fine. She’ll be fine.” His words didn’t seem to reassure her. He thought of the team on Shayle—Dr. Hauser, Akari, Philips. And Sigurd. The scene at Inferni flashed in his mind. The wave of energy. The impossible heat in the emptiness of space. The silent explosions of so many ships. The death—thousands dead in an instant. Suddenly, he didn’t believe his own words.
She nodded as if he had reassured her, but he felt like she was just trying to end the exchange. He let his hand fall off her shoulder and left her alone on the bridge. Trapper Mayne stood, hands folded behind his back, facing Hep as the door opened. The monk said nothing. He looked as though he had much to say. He studied Hep a moment before leaving.
The corridor echoed like an empty tomb.
5
The Fair Wind was not the worst ship Wilco had ever seen. Indeed, it was not even in the top five worst ships he’d had the misfortune of sailing on, but it was lacking. A salvage ship, for starters. How disappointing. To see Hepzah fall so far as to proudly embrace a blue-collar life. At his age, Hep was as experienced as most of the pirates who died at Ore Town, and he was leagues smarter. A clever boy from the start, Wilco always thought it would be Hep who would rise through Parallax’s ranks and eventually captain the ship that would make them their fortune.
But he was a failure.
Wilco should have known that. Smart, cunning, better with people, but Hep was weak. He was woven together with fraying fibers. Wilco was tightly knitte
d with iron cord, strong like the hull of a deep-black ship. Nothing passed through him. Once again, he would need to drag Hep into the future, to show him what needed to be done and force him to do it.
“I’m confused,” Shankar said. He paced the length of the bunkroom where Wilco and his team had settled. “That captain fellow thinks I’m a smuggler?”
“Indeed,” Wilco said.
“But I’m not a smuggler.”
“No,” Wilco said, staring at his reflection in the blade of his dagger, the colors of his mask undulating like a nebula. “You are a simpleton.”
Trapper entered the bunkroom before Shankar could respond. Wilco looked to him expectantly. “He’s worried,” Trapper said.
“Unhelpful,” Wilco said. “He’s always worried. I need to know whether he suspects.”
“I don’t believe he does. His fear was dominant. I didn’t feel any suspicion or skepticism.” Trapper sat on the bed he’d claimed as his own and drew up his legs, folding them under him, and laid his staff across his lap. “Though that will change. Hepzah is preoccupied with the feelings of others, but he is observant. He will discover that we are being dishonest eventually.”
Still studying his reflection, Wilco ran his fingers down his mask. “Then I’ll deal with it eventually. Until then, we proceed as planned.”
“About that,” Shankar said. “What is it that you got planned? I’m feeling a mite lost.”
“I assume that is a common feeling for you?” Wilco said. He shifted his studious gaze from his reflection to Shankar. His shoulders slouched, and his jaw hung open. Nothing about the man seemed intimidating or commanding. “How did you ever become a warlord?”
“I’m an assassin. I kill people without being seen. And I’m good at it. I stabbed my captain in the back and took his ship. Reputation grew from there. Any time that reputation was threatened, I stabbed someone else in the back.”
Wilco nodded, a newfound appreciation growing for his stupid prisoner. “Simplicity is the best approach.”
“So maybe you tell me what the plan is now? You went through a lot of trouble to spring me from the syndicate. Figure it wasn’t just a kindness. You want me to kill someone.”
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 51
