He appeared as if from nowhere and attacked the rear group. He slammed his staff against the side of one sailor’s head, sending him to the ground in a heap. Now able to see their attacker, the sailors opened fire. Still disoriented, they missed their target. Trapper was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, disappearing into the chamber. Even Hep, from his elevated point of view, lost sight of him.
The sailors rejoined as a unit minus the unconscious one, who would be out for a while. The team was visibly shaken, and that lit a fire in Hep’s chest. “How we doing?”
Dr. Hauser answered through the comm. “Moving him now. Let you know when we board.”
“Byrne?”
“Engines are ready to fire. Waiting for your signal.”
“Stand by.”
Hep readied to move to his next position, but something froze him in his tracks. As the Navy team maneuvered themselves back into a fighting unit, he caught a glimpse of their faces. He recognized three of them—Roker, Croft, and Byron—from the Royal Blue. He hadn’t crossed paths with them, or even spoken with them all that much, but he knew them, sailed with them. He’d had a few passing conversations with Roker about the mechanics of the ship, talked engines with her a few times. He wished he could talk to her now, just her, and find out where Mao stood. Did he really send her down here to capture or kill him? Was she an ally?
He couldn’t ask her, so he moved on. “Moving to point C. Akari, fall back. Kill team, they’re coming your way.” Calling them the kill team was not Hep’s idea—just the thought of it made him uncomfortable—but he couldn’t deny their purpose.
The Navy team worked their way back through the chamber toward the vault. As Hep suspected, the Navy only needed to perform some basic recon of the station, like pulling the schematics, to make an educated guess as to where they’d find Sigurd. Fortunately, the Navy was as predictable as they were overpowered.
Timing was key. Spring too early and the sailors would be able to break for cover. Too late, and they would know something was up before they were ensnared. And Hep couldn’t forget the Royal Blue and Illuminate overhead. The distraction down here needed to be so that the ships up there would avert their gaze if only for a second.
The sailors reached the vault door. The same man as before produced an explosive charge and placed it on the massive hinge.
“Be ready,” Hep said.
The sailors braced themselves. The charge detonated and sent a boom rumbling through the station. The massive metal door landed with an apocalyptic thud on the ground. The sailors yelled for everyone inside the vault to exit with their hands up. They were answered with laughter.
Wilco emerged from the lingering smoke of the explosion, his hands above his head mockingly. “You’ve caught me. I surrender.”
“Go,” Hep ordered. And all the moving parts sprang into action. Trapper emerged to assist Wilco. Akari and Hauser made for the ship, escorting Sigurd and all the remaining crew. Horus and Kurda secured the landing platform, ensuring the ship would be able to take off. Byrne fired up the engines. Hep, despite knowing his role in the plan as he was the one who crafted it, remained planted where he was.
“Down on your knees,” the sailors ordered. The group split their focus, half aimed at Trapper and half at Wilco.
“Not bloody likely,” Wilco said. “But I will allow you this one last moment to place your weapons ever-so-gently on the floor and then take your place next to them. Should you refuse, I will reluctantly slice you open.”
“Get down!” the sailors yelled.
“You’re right,” Wilco said. “It won’t be reluctantly.” He drew his sword, the black blade looking like a hole in space rather than a physical object. He sliced through the first sailor’s blaster before the man had the chance to fire it. Trapper lunged forward from the opposite side, squeezing the sailors in the middle. But these weren’t novices. Croft and Byron, Hep knew, were elite commandos. They’d served in units that operated behind enemy lines, the kind of people sent into enemy territory to rescue stranded sailors or perform black ops sabotage missions. They were experts in hand-to-hand combat and multiple weapons systems, as well as top-notch pilots. The others still were sailors serving on ships in wartime and chosen for the away teams. It would be absurd to assume they were anything but capable.
Trapper swept the legs out from under one sailor as he worked his way toward the middle of the pack. Unfortunately, he was then met by Croft, who blocked the staff with his rifle. For the first time since meeting him, Trapper exhibited an emotion other than calm. He seemed surprised. Worried, even. Croft shifted his weight and slid to the side, sending Trapper stumbling past him to where Byron was waiting to drive his fist into Trapper’s face. Trapper ducked, barely avoiding the potentially devastating blow.
Wilco seemed to be enjoying himself. His mask flashed like a siren from blue to red, confusing those who attacked him. He sliced down with his sword and removed a sailor’s hand, spraying blood into the air. The sailor’s scream was cut short as Wilco dragged his dagger across the sailor’s throat. He drove his sword through the gut of another as the sailor charged at him.
Hep finally moved from his perch. He leapt over the catwalk railing and landed on the scaffolding that hung from the ceiling and ran from one end of the chamber to the other.
Wilco raised his sword and looked for a head to separate from its shoulders. He found Roker. She managed to fire a blast from her pistol, but he slapped her gun aside at the last moment, sending her shot wide. He slammed the butt of his dagger into the side of her head. She dropped to one knee, a fresh stream of blood pouring from her temple.
Hep dropped from the scaffolding and landed next to Wilco. “Stop!” Wilco froze. “We don’t have time. We need to take off now or we’ll be trapped here.”
Wilco’s sword hung in the air, the weight of death on it. Hep wished he could see through Wilco’s mask, see the expressions chasing their way across his face. He hoped there were still expressions there, not just a cold stare, or, at least, more than the manic anger he’d witnessed before.
Hep gripped Wilco’s arm, not in a forceful manner, not trying to pull him away, but in the gentle way he did when they were kids, as if to remind Wilco that he once acted as his conscience and could again. Roker shifted her eyes from the sword to Hep. He felt her pleading stare burn into the side of his head.
The black blade came down and hung at Wilco’s side. “Then by all means, lead us away to safety, dear captain.” Wilco pulled his arm free of Hep’s grip. He signaled for Trapper to follow as he walked toward the back of the chamber.
Before following, Hep looked down at Roker. Confusion wrinkled her brow. She wanted to ask him so many things. That was clear from her expression. But she chose instead to say, “He’s with you.”
A warmth spread over the surface of Hep’s skin. He knew she meant Mao—that the captain had not fallen completely under Tirseer’s thumb, that Hep still had some allies, some friends he could count on.
He nodded and followed Wilco.
11
The heat in his blood was still foreign to him, though he’d been living with it for more than a year now. He watched the others tremble in the cold, their teeth chatter as they fought to keep every ounce of warmth their bodies had. Wilco felt no cold.
Not in that regard, anyway. The bouts of emptiness came more frequently. A deep sense of nothing spawned in his chest, swallowing everything that he was until he was nothing. In that moment, he was at peace. As at peace as a star, a nebulous cloud held together by nothing, radiating brilliance. It existed and longed for nothing.
Then the hole inside him spit everything back up and the bile that was Wilco spilled back into his body. The stew of anger and hate and bitterness that pickled his insides from the time of his earliest memory boiled. And then he was himself again.
He felt a pull in his blood, a motivation that wasn’t his own. It drew him to Cloak and to Sigurd. He wanted to resist it when his thinking was his own
. When he could no longer maintain himself, when his mind was no longer wholly his own, he wanted to run to them, to be near them. He felt like they were part of him.
“Are you in there?” Trapper Mayne’s voice pulled him out. Wilco looked up from his hands, holding the dagger he did not remember drawing from its sheath.
“What?”
“Are you back?” Trapper’s empathic ability allowed him some insight as to what was happening inside Wilco. He may not have understood it or why it was happening, but he knew something was happening. And that was more than anyone else.
“Yeah. What is it?”
“Captain Montaine’s plan. We were discussing how we might adapt it to suit our needs.” Trapper spoke with the soft compassion of a teacher trying to guide a student toward the correct behavior.
Shaking his head, Wilco shifted into the manic persona to which others were accustomed. He became Wilco as the world knew him, pretended to be himself. “I was just ruminating on how stupid my former partner is. There’s a reason he’s mostly found whimpering in a corner and not out front of the pack, growling at predators. He’s weak, and he’s going to get everyone killed. Well, all of his people, anyway. We won’t be sticking around for any of that.”
“So you do have a plan of your own?” Trapper asked.
“That I do. And it’s as beautiful as it is simple. Tell me, how do you feel about a double-cross?”
His insides felt like his again, finally. Brutality was the only thing he’d found that made his mind his own again. Something about the pleasure he took in it pushed the thing inside him back down, like it had an aversion to the joy of violence. It regarded violence as merely utilitarian, a means to reaching its end. Wilco was completely himself as he looked down at the Navy woman, bleeding from the side of her head, pathetic pleas in her eyes, silently begging him not to bring his sword down across her neck.
The touch on his arm felt familiar. A shock that brought him back from the edge where he longed to be. Another presence, though this one external, that tried to wrangle him, force him to be something other than who he was. This one stood on sentiment rather than force of will.
Hep looked at him with eyes as pathetic as the Navy woman’s. Both such weak, mewling fools. She didn’t deserve his mercy. Hep didn’t deserve his regard. But he offered them regardless, if only temporarily. Wilco sheathed his sword and ran through the chamber toward the rear exit of the complex.
“Are you prepared for this?” Trapper said, running alongside. “I can feel the turmoil inside you.”
“If I’ve got any turmoil, it comes from so many people trying to tell me what to do. Let me alone and see how tormented I really am.”
The rear exit opened in front of them. The cold air hit them in the face, causing Trapper to cough as it burned his lungs. Wilco breathed in deep. The Fair Wind sat on a makeshift landing platform twenty meters ahead on the edge of cliff. They’d transformed a storage area, a graveyard for broken machines, with impressive haste and relocated the ship before the Navy arrived.
Kurda and Horus stood at the bottom of the gangplank, bracing against the cold and bitter wind. They tensed more when they saw Wilco approach. Kurda acknowledged the unspoken command. Horus seemed to hear it. He looked from Kurda to Wilco and his expression turned dour.
“You really doing this?” Horus asked them all.
“You’re welcome to join,” Wilco said. “We’ve fought side by side. I know the kind of man you are. I know the kind of man you aren’t. You’re better suited for us than you are for them.”
Horus’s chin fell to his chest. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But I don’t take that as a compliment.”
Hep exited the complex and started running toward them, slowed by the increasing intensity of the wind. “Get on board! We need to leave now!”
“Clear the ship for me then,” Wilco ordered Horus. “It’s time we leave.”
“You misunderstand,” Horus said. “Just because you’re right doesn’t mean I want you to be right. I was making an honest living before the cluster. Well, mostly honest. But I was done with the cutthroat life. And I was happy for that.”
Wilco sneered and nodded to Kurda. Without hesitation, she drove her meaty fist into the side of Horus’s head. The big man toppled sideways, a massive oak cut out from the bottom. Trapper ran up the gangplank. Kurda followed once she was sure Horus wasn’t getting back up.
Hep froze. Wilco turned to greet him. “Apologies, but this is where we part ways.”
“I’m okay with that as long as you plan on being the one left on this freezing rock.”
Wilco shrugged. “I dislike the cold.”
“Why are you doing this? Why now? If you wanted to steal my ship, you could have done so before. Or steal something else. Something nicer.”
“As blind as you are weak,” Wilco said, drawing his sword. “This isn’t about your ship. It’s about what’s on it.”
Hep drew his sword. “So, what? You’re going to sell Sigurd to the highest bidder? He’s just a weapon for you to market and make a profit from?”
“There is a war on,” Wilco said, his voice growing serious. “But not the one you’re caught up in. That one doesn’t matter. Byers. Navy. They’re inconsequential.”
Hep squeezed his fingers around the handle of his sword, knuckles white from tension and cold. “What is he?”
Wilco carved a line in the rock at his feet. “The future.”
Hep charged, sword held high and anger burning on his face. Wilco didn’t move. He appeared not to care—until the very last second, as Hep’s blade came slicing down a killing blow. Wilco brought his sword to meet it, knocking Hep’s blue blade aside and allowing Hep’s momentum to knock him off balance.
Wilco stared at Hep’s back for a long second, imagining shoving his sword through it and feeling his friend’s blood spill over his hand. Lost in thought, assuming Hep still a naïve child, he didn’t notice the glint of steel in Hep’s other hand. Hep slashed back with a dagger he’d had tucked inside his shirt. Wilco threw his hips back just in time to avoid being sliced across the belly.
“Playing for keeps,” Wilco said, sounding impressed.
“You aren’t taking my ship.”
The intensity that flared in Hep’s eyes was unrecognizable to Wilco, but he appreciated it. It was familiar. The frantic rage one sees in a wild animal backed into a corner knowing that its actions in the coming seconds will be the difference between freedom and a cage. “If I thought you could continue like this, I’d invite you along, but I know you can’t maintain. Like a flower that blooms for one day only to wilt and die the next. This isn’t you. This kind of fury. It’s alien to you. It’ll burn you up.”
Hep lunged again, more controlled this time. He thrust the Benevolent blade at Wilco’s gut. As Wilco parried, Hep slashed at Wilco’s face with his dagger. Wilco drew his own dagger to block. The struggle in Hep’s face pushed at Wilco’s theory. This fury was real and deep, not the flippant anger that flashes and dies. There was anger in him, but not enough, and it was too immature to harness properly.
Wilco kicked Hep in the ankle. Hep dropped to one knee. He rolled forward, under Wilco’s Malevolent blade. Space between them again, Hep squared his body and readied for another attack.
“You know less about me than you think,” Hep said. “What I’m capable of.”
Wilco laughed. “I doubt that.”
Barely had the words left Wilco’s mouth than Hep’s dagger sunk into the rock at Wilco’s feet, momentarily drawing Wilco’s attention. When he looked up, Hep had already crossed the distance between them. Wilco crossed his cybernetic arm in front of him, shielding himself from the attack, from what would have been a killing blow. Hep’s blade pierced the arm, eliciting a shower of sparks and a rush of nerve pain.
The emptiness surged inside Wilco, the pain throwing Wilco’s concentration and allowing it to take more control. As it did, the pain ebbed, along with Wilco’s already diminished self-re
straint. Wilco shoved his boot into Hep’s face. Hep fell back, blood blinding him. Wilco stepped forward, ready to shove his dagger into Hep’s throat, but a well-placed blaster shot halted him.
“Don’t move!” Roker yelled. She ran toward them flanked by Croft and Byron, all with rifles trained on Wilco.
At the same time, Trapper emerged from the Fair Wind, forcing all of Hep’s people out. Alarmed at the sight, Trapper swept the legs out from under Hauser, Byrne, and a few techs, then rushed to Wilco’s aid. He stepped between Wilco and the three sailors, using his staff to deflect several blaster shots. “Go,” he said to Wilco.
But Wilco pushed Trapper aside. He walked toward the sailors, unafraid. He felt the emptiness, the cold, consume him. Then fire in his blood.
The sailors opened fire. With impossible speed, Wilco dodged every attack, moving like an animal, ducking and weaving and leaping. He closed the distance between him and the sailors without being struck. He grabbed the barrel of Byron’s rifle, hot with use, without issue. He yanked the blaster free and grabbed the sailor by the throat. He lifted Byron off the ground with one hand and, just as easily, snapped his neck. He dropped Byron in a lifeless heap.
Croft erupted. He charged at Wilco, undeterred by the feat he’d just witnessed, blinded by rage and tragedy. He unleashed a flurry of punches, utilizing the close-quarters combat he’d learned as a commando, the deadliest hand-to-hand fighters in the Navy. Wilco blocked every attack with ease. Grabbing Croft by the wrist, Wilco twisted his hip and threw Croft to the ground. With a flick of his wrist, Wilco snapped Croft’s arm at the elbow. Croft’s cries of agony were quickly stifled when Wilco stomped on his face, crushing his skull.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 56
