Ayala cocked her head to the side, knowing something that Elmore assumed she did not. “You sent a ship after this man.” She pointed at Wilco. “With orders to capture and return. If it was your reputation you were worried about, you could have just shot them down and made an example of them. I don’t think retrieving Shankar was your goal. I think retrieving Wilco was.”
Elmore shifted in his chair. “And what use would I have for a pirate?”
“A simple pirate?” Ayala said. “None whatsoever. I think you know that he is no simple pirate. That he is the tip of a spear that you could wield.”
He shifted again, back to his original position. “Tirseer was right to fear you. You weren’t aware that she did, were you?” Elmore stood, the strain on his face as he did a reminder of how old he was. “As far back as the warlord days, when I was running black ops for her, I could see it whenever your name was mentioned. A captain then, rising through the ranks, making a name for yourself. But it wasn’t your skill as a pilot or a captain that worried her, it was your insight. Only a person who can see through the shadows she casts could ever prove a threat to Maria Tirseer.” He favored his right knee as he walked around his chair, and he winced as his foot came down. “But did I seek him out?” He pointed at Wilco. “Or the cargo he has hidden away on his ship?”
Wilco thought of Sigurd, stashed behind wall panels like a brick of contraband, his skin blue and eyes empty. A living nuclear bomb with the same conscience as a weapon.
“You can’t do one without the other,” Ayala said. “You only have access to the cargo because Wilco has it. You couldn’t have attacked the Navy without threatening your standing as an independent operator, playing to both sides, left alone by both sides. You survive because you are an asset. Make yourself a threat, and you would be treated as one. I can tell you that I know from firsthand accounts that Colonel Tirseer would welcome the opportunity to wipe you out. As pragmatic as she is, she is not immune to bouts of irrational, emotionally-driven action.”
Elmore hobbled along, growing steadier on his feet with each step. “And you’ve cut to the heart of the matter. I feel the knife’s point at my back. Maria has grown increasingly rash the last few years, and I suspect that you and that thing on your ship have something to do with that. Regardless, I know it’s only a matter of time before she rescinds the unspoken agreement that has allowed me to operate free of harassment from Central. She is consolidating power and resources. She will come for me, but I will come for her first.”
“Wonderful,” Wilco said as he clapped his hands. “We were just on our way to murder her before you interrupted.”
Elmore removed a metal cylinder from his pocket. Pressing a button on the side, it extended to several feet long. Wilco reached for his sword, but before he could draw the blade and finally eviscerate the old man, Elmore put the tip of the metal rod on the floor and shifted his weight off his bad leg. He slapped his knee with his free hand. “Some see this as a weakness. You do, no doubt, in your youthful view of things. I led a sabotage mission deep into a warlord’s territory at the height of armed aggression. It was one of the few missions I ran where I was almost sure I would not return. I knew I’d be successful—I never fail—but that success might require my death. In the end, I survived, but I took a blaster shot to the knee, obliterating my patella and all soft tissue. Cybernetic prosthetics and surgical reconstruction back then weren’t what they are now. Patched me up well enough to continue fighting another three decades. Only in the last few years has it started to ache enough to put me down.”
Elmore shuffled forward, his cane tapping out a rhythm. “This knee is a testament to my abilities, my dedication to my craft, and the fact that I am good enough to wade through all that I did and come out the other side.” He jabbed his cane into Wilco’s chest. “You planned on flying into the most fortified structure in the systems and put a knife in the back of the most dangerous woman alive?”
Wilco pointed to Shankar. “That’s why we took him.”
Elmore laughed. “Edi Shankar is a spineless slug. Still, I see the tactical advantage to employing someone like him. Being a slug, he can squeeze himself into situations too difficult for most. He has displayed a sometimes-exceptional ability to position himself in the right place at the right time, but he is embarrassingly lacking in every other way to complete this mission.”
Shankar made to voice his disapproval at being labeled such but seemed to rethink it and remained silent instead.
Wilco let his hand fall away from the handle of his sword. “I take it you have some suggestions then?”
“I do. First, you’re woefully understaffed. You need an army to pull off the kind of operation you’re attempting. And I happen to have one.”
Wilco’s breath caught in his throat. “You’re offering me the Elmore Syndicate?”
“I was willing to lend you a contingent of ships and soldiers to aid you in completing your mission. But now that I see whose company you keep…” He looked at Ayala. “I’m thinking I might just hand over the keys entirely. Assuming the great Admiral Shay Ayala will be the one at the helm.”
Ayala feigned consternation. She paced backward, pretended to consider it, pretended to be wholly human. She stopped in front of him, eyes narrowed as if in thought. “You would do that? Give me everything you’ve built?”
“Loan,” Elmore corrected. “I will loan you everything I’ve built. With certain caveats.” The strain of standing on his bum leg growing apparent on his face, Elmore shuffled back to his chair. “I want Tirseer gone before she decides to make me gone. But my standing in the systems must remain intact after she’s gone. I can’t be seen as a threat by whoever or whatever replaces her. This can’t come back on me. I will change all of the signatures of my ships. None of my people are in any databases. My name will stay out of their mouths and out of yours.”
Ayala nodded. “Understood. What else?”
“I’ll be taking precautions to assure my property is returned. Every ship in my fleet is programmed with a homing code. With the push of a button, I can turn them all around and send them back here. If I feel like our interests no longer align, I will pull the rug out from under you.”
“Fair enough,” Ayala said as she extended her hand.
As Elmore accepted it, Wilco’s heart raced. He fully intended to kill Tirseer. To accomplish the goal Ayala told him shortly after he woke, he knew Tirseer had to die. They would usher in a world he had only seen in dreams, the kind of world that almost existed in Ore Town. But Ayala was a different person then, and, with the person she was now, thinking of an army under her command terrified him.
“Let’s get your army mobilized,” Elmore said.
4
“This might be the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard.” Captain Medviev glared at the congregation of prisoners she’d just apprehended. They shuddered under the weight of her judgment. “After all we did so you could escape, you broadcast your location in the hopes that I would get here first?”
“It was a calculated risk,” Mao said.
“Not that calculated,” Medviev said. “I think you’ve been off the leash too long, Taliesin. You’re starting to act like these people.”
“These people?” Horus said. “I’m offended.”
“No, you aren’t.” Medviev shot him a withering glare. “I’m offended. By all of you. By the fact that you assume I will go along with this plan. You want me to deliver the Trojan Horse. I’m a Trojan. If this goes wrong, Tirseer will string me up as a traitor.”
“What is she talking about?” Horus said.
“Read your history, you goon.” Medviev locked Mao in her sights. “You should know better than this. What’s your endgame here? Jeska has taken considerable pains to keep you out of Tirseer’s hands. She’s put herself at risk, and now you’re putting her in the position of choosing between outright defying Tirseer by helping you live through this and allowing Tirseer to execute you.”
“It won’
t come to that,” Mao assured. “Our plan extends beyond surrendering ourselves. We have an exit plan.”
Medviev scoffed. “It’d best be a good one.” She paused a moment and stared at Mao through the bars of his cell. “You understand where you are? What you’re about to do? What will happen if this doesn’t work? I’m a serving captain. Tirseer will see this as an insurrection. It won’t just be me who goes down. Any captain Tirseer doesn’t have absolute trust in, Jeska, they’re all going down. Tirseer is just waiting for an excuse to cull the Navy and further consolidate her control.”
The implications were not lost on Mao. They clogged his lungs like coal dust, choking him from the inside. “I’m aware.”
“Then at least make this worth it.” Medviev left the brig without waiting for Mao to respond.
A lingering sense of unease hung in her absence. Mao questioned whether this was the right call, the smart move, or if it was just sentiment clouding his judgment. He feared condemning all those sitting in the brig with him, all those serving under Medviev on the Brightstar, Admiral Jeska, and so many others, because of his guilt.
“This is the right move,” Hep said as if reading Mao’s thoughts. “It’s a solid plan.”
“A right crazy plan,” Horus said.
“Real crazy,” Bigby said, smiling from the other side of the bars. “Speaking of, I sent that message about an hour ago. Kept the details from Medviev like you said.”
“It went through?” Hep said.
“It did. They were understandably skeptical. Medviev is not going to be happy about this.”
“I know,” Hep said. “But it’s the only way to keep her in the clear and get us out safe.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t imperil the security of the entire United Systems in the process,” Mao added.
Hep inhaled and held the breath in his lungs until it burned. “Yes, let’s hope we don’t do that.”
Hep drifted off to sleep, though he did not remember feeling tired. The fatigue and break-neck pace at which they’d been moving was finally catching up with him. He willed away the tightness in his throat and chest, the sure signs of coming illness for weeks. But, on a bed with nothing else to do, he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
He welcomed the rest, but he did not welcome the dreams. They were all fire and death, flashes of different events over the past few years, snipped like clippings from a magazine and pasted together in one gruesome collage. Scenes of childhood, of scrounging for scraps in dumpsters, of fighting and drawing blood to keep what little he found. Ore Town and all the dead burned to ash on the surface of the moon, the bodies left to drift in the blackness. Inferni. The war. The countless dogfights and space battles and near misses, time when he flew so close to death, he could feel its cold breath on the back of his neck.
He woke with a start and felt a single drop of cold sweat run down his brow. A sailor stood outside the cell looking in, a flashlight in his hand. As comprehension dawned on him, Hep realized the sailor had banged on the bars. Medviev shared the true details of the situation only with her top officers. The rest of the crew was only aware of what appeared true on the surface—that they had several traitors locked in their brig.
“Coming into Central,” the sailor said. “Rise and shine and say your good-byes to this world.” As he walked away, he spoke over his shoulder. “Because you’re about to enter a kind of hell that’ll have you wishing for death.”
Hep tried not to take the sailor’s attitude personally. And tried not to let the warning rattle him. The truth of the statement pierced Hep’s ears. Thoughts of what Tirseer would do to them if they got caught took over. Fear sent his heart racing.
“Focus,” Mao said. “We need to be at our best right now.”
“I’m always at my best,” Horus said.
“That is a troubling thought,” Mao replied.
Bigby returned a minute later, now dressed in his captain’s uniform. Medviev assured them that Jeska had adjusted his orders, officially declaring that he had been serving in a special capacity as an off-the-books envoy of the admiral’s, traveling the edges of the systems to drum up support among disparate factions against the Byers Clan. Medviev rendezvoused with him and served as his ride home, according to official reports. “You all ready for this?”
“We are. Are you?” Mao asked, concern heavy in his voice. “We’re putting you in the same position as Medviev. If this goes south, your head will likely find its way to the chopping block.”
Bigby waved off the worry. “No one put me in any position. I chose this. Now let’s get this thing done. I’m getting antsy to get back to my ship. I know she misses me.” He laughed as he walked away, but it sounded different than his usual light laughter, like it was masking something.
The brig fell silent. Even Horus’s jaw was clenched tight, afraid to speak and break the eerie calm, thinking it might invite the calamity sooner. They waited for another to speak words of encouragement, to remind them that they were smart and capable and on the side of right. But none did. They thought themselves captains without ships, but now they were no longer even that. They were no leaders.
The cell door slid open, and they were shackled at the wrists.
Mao tried to focus. With every fiber of himself, he tried. But to be back on Central after so long away. This place was his home. And, now, to be marched through in chains, looked on like a traitor… His heart didn’t even break. It shriveled, like a grape in the sun, until it was dried and empty.
The security detail that removed them from the Brightstar presented them to the deck officer at the security checkpoint. The officer looked at them with disdain. “Elvin Horus, Oliver Graeme, Hepzah Montaine, and Taliesin Mao. Colonel Tirseer has been waiting to speak with you.” He motioned for his security team to take custody of the four prisoners.
“What about their ship?” the initial security officer asked.
“Ground it,” the deck officer said. “Then tear it apart. Colonel Tirseer wants anything of interest brought directly to her.”
Hep thought of what was hidden on the ship—namely, the rest of his crew. They weren’t on any Navy logs or wanted lists. Hep picked them up mostly on the course of his travels over the last three years. Being an independent contractor, there was no record of them on any corporate databases. The Fair Wind was registered to him, and he was listed as the only official crew. The rest of them were ghosts. At least, until Tirseer’s men tore the Bucket apart.
“Yes, sir,” the security officer said before turning back toward the hangar.
The new security team was not gentle in escorting Hep and the others through the hangar, though they did at least make the effort to hide them from view. Parading some traitors through Central, especially one who was so well-respected as Mao, wouldn’t have been good for morale. The security team steered the prisoners into a doorway that led to a narrow tunnel on the other side of the wall. It looked to be a service tunnel, a way for techs to access the labyrinth of machinery that kept Central running.
Once they entered the service tunnel, something changed. A shift in the atmosphere, like the magnetic poles of a planet being reversed and everything started flowing backward. They walked a few meters, sure they were far enough from the door, before the deck officer stopped and spun on his heels. “Admiral Jeska is aware of your plans.” The mention of her name set off a confusing chain reaction of emotions inside Mao. Relief, anxiety, fear. He settled on hope. “She can’t offer anything in the way of direct assistance. She’s got her hands full trying to keep this place together. Such turmoil on Central, I’m sure you’ve heard. Restructuring. Most of the personnel has been shipped to the Black Border. Severely understaffed. Been hard to keep things running straight. Anyway, this is our second double shift this week. We can hardly see straight.” He paused and waited.
Mao took a moment to process what was happening. He smiled and said, “Thank you. And I’m sorry.” Then he grabbed the deck officer by the wrist and pulled the
man toward him. Mao drove his knee into the officer’s gut. Hep and Horus followed suit, incapacitating the security team. Graeme seemed lost, watching the scene unfold as if stepping into a movie halfway through.
Hep lifted the keys from the officer and freed them all from their wrist shackles. “This change things?”
“No,” Mao answered. “We stick to the plan. Jeska cleared a path, but she can’t aid us directly. Feet to the fire and she will follow orders.” Mao removed the blaster on the deck officer’s belt. “And I would expect nothing less. To assist us would not only be treason, it would be an act of insurrection, of rebellion. It would throw the entire United Systems into chaos.”
“Maybe that’s just what the systems need,” Horus said.
Hep didn’t disagree. He knew Mao did. Chaos was the antithesis of Taliesin Mao. He could not function in such a state. Even now, operating outside the boundaries of order, he still needed that order to exist.
They armed themselves with the security team’s weapons. Hep shoved a sidearm into Graeme’s hands. “I would rather not,” Graeme said.
“Leave the fighting to us,” Hep said. “But keep this just in case.”
“These are sailors, sir,” Graeme said, looking to Mao. “Doing what they have been ordered to do. Everyone on this station is a sailor following orders.”
Mao checked his weapon. Assured it was ready to fire, he lowered it to his side. “I know, Oliver. I take no pleasure in what must be done. I will avoid using force for as long as I can. But the fate of much more than our consciences rests on this. If you cannot pull the trigger, I need to know that now.”
Graeme looked at the blaster. “Weigh the cost,” he said, as if to himself. “One life, a handful of lives, for millions more. I can pull the trigger, sir.”
“Then let’s move.”
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 60
