Ranger Bayne Read online

  Ranger Bayne

  The Deep Black, Book 3

  James David Victor

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Thank You

  Bonus Content: Story Preview

  1

  The bobber drifted atop the water, a lazy piece of plastic whose sole purpose was to float and be still. Most of the time. A few seconds every hour or so, it would move. But, mostly, its only job was to let you know where it was. Remind you that everything was just how it was the moment prior, and the moment prior to that, and every moment since you tied it to a line and dropped it in the lake.

  Drummond Bayne found staring at that ball of plastic more rewarding than hooking a fish. It was the meditation, not the sport, that he enjoyed. Looking out over the water, contemplating on the nature of inanimate objects. When his line finally jerked, he considered it an interruption.

  But he reeled it in just the same. Whether sport was the goal or not, one didn’t waste a good catch, or pass on the opportunity to have fresh fish for dinner.

  Bayne dropped the fish, a trout, into his basket along with the others, more than a dozen in all. It had been an afternoon full of interruption.

  He put new bait on his hook and cast his line. It plunked into the water, breaking the mirrored surface of the lake into an endless ring of ripples, and sank, leaving the bobber to do its job. Bayne fell into a stillness as he watched it.

  Until, like a hook hitting the water, a man broke Bayne’s peace.

  “You deaf? I said drop the rod.”

  The bobber held Bayne’s attention, commanded it. “I heard you,” Bayne said.

  “Then I’ll give you ‘til three to do as I say ‘fore I put two holes in you.” The man inched forward, crossing slightly into Bayne’s periphery.

  Bayne could feel a blaster on him, like a bug crawling up his neck. A faint tickle that he wanted to scratch. The bobber didn’t move. No disturbances. Nothing happening that should not be happening.

  “Goddammit,” the man cursed, inching closer. “Hell’s the matter with you?”

  Bayne gave a spin on the reel. “Just fishing.”

  The man gave a tense, uncomfortable laugh. “You’re voided, man. The Deep Black done sucked all sense out of your head.”

  A little pressure on the line. Nothing constituting an interruption, but something worth noting. Bayne could see most of the man now without turning to look at him. He was still in a spacewalk suit. His ship must still be in orbit, cloaked. He had probably dropped down in a shuttle, which meant there were more of his kind about—maybe more planet-side, but definitely more in his ship. But his suit was haggard, patched together one too many times. His crew would be small. His ship would be a midsize cruiser, not built for the Deep Black but modified enough to make do.

  “That could be,” Bayne said. “Been out in it a while.”

  “Yeah, I know all about it,” the man said. “The dossier on you ain’t light for detail. Navy wants you real bad.”

  Bayne felt a tug on his line. He’d hooked something, but it was best to let it sit a moment. Get too excited and start yanking on it, and he was bound to lose his catch. Let the hook work its way in first.

  “That they do,” Bayne said, still looking out over the lake. “What’s that dossier give you as far as their reason?”

  “Don’t much care,” the man said. “That much money, reasons don’t matter.” He moved toward the water, circling around in front of Bayne. A foolish move, one done out of curiosity, not necessity or strategy. He claimed not to care for reasons, and that was probably true, but he wanted to see what kind of man warranted such a bounty.

  “I don’t suppose they do.” The bobber ducked below the surface for a moment then returned like nothing had happened. “Money like that doesn’t draw out men of principle. Money is the principle. The driving force for all of this, I think. I fear it is, anyway. It often tends to be. I can tell you honestly that it will break my heart if that proves true.”

  The man spit out broken fragments of a laugh. “Stuff your heartbreak back in your chest. This ain’t therapy. Sounds like you got things you need to confess. I ain’t a priest or a judge. Save it for Central. You can find one of each there and cry to them all you like.” He spoke into a wrist-mounted comm. “I found him. Wasn’t worth the prep. Just a sad sack on the beach. Come pick us up.”

  Bayne sighed. “I’ve known my fill of men like you. Opportunistic. Self-serving. Was a time I believed that philosophy was worth dying for, ironic as that sounds.”

  “Shut up,” the man ordered.

  Bayne could see the blaster in the man’s hand now. A standard pistol. Looked to be Navy issue. This man may have been a sailor once. Or just took it off a dead one. “Not so sure what I believe anymore. Not sure it even matters. There’s what I believe and what I can do.”

  The man’s fingers tightened around the handle of his blaster. “I said shut up.”

  “I believe I’m obligated toward the latter, regardless of the former.”

  The battery pack on the man’s blaster whined with the half-squeeze of the trigger. “Man, if you don’t shut your mouth—”

  “That just feels so empty,” Bayne said. The bobber disappeared below the surface again. It didn’t return. “All I really want to do is fish.” He cranked on the reel and yanked back on the pole. A trout broke the surface of the lake, flopping and thrashing through the air.

  The man turned his gaze toward the fish, only for a second.

  Bayne dropped the pole in that second, drew his blaster, and put two smoking holes in the man’s chest. The man dropped dead. Bayne returned his attention to his rod. He reeled the fish in, grabbed it, and dropped in his bucket with the rest.

  Then he cast his line again.

  As much as he loved this place, it wasn’t lost on Bayne that Backwater was an illusion. A moon in the outer reaches of the Deep Black, some industrious explorers had terraformed it generations ago. Part of the dream of colonizing the Deep Black, spreading the influence the Byers Clan or United Systems or whoever held the reins at the time. The dream was always the same, only the people driving it changed.

  Backwater was abandoned in the first decade. It was too far out, too far from supply lines and support. Too secluded. And that was why pirates loved it. They used it as a way station, a place to rest and relax, stash their loot, meet buyers. Before Bayne and the Royal Blue drove them all off. There were few left who knew about Backwater, either pirate or Navy. Bayne had never charted it. Never reported it to Central. He liked the idea of there being one place in the galaxy that was left untouched, wild.

  But it was only wild because it had been touched. Backwater should have been desolate.

  Now, he needed there to be a place like that. Not so he could hide, but so he had a reason to keep going.

  The wind was warm and carried the scent of a storm. Electricity on the air. A ship landed fifty meters up shore, in the clearing between the ridge of
boulders and the tree line. Exactly where he thought it would. A midsize cruiser. Exactly what he thought it would be. A junker, made to function in the Deep, but just barely. The thrusters were the bare minimum capacity suggested for making jumps out here. A fraction less power, and you risked running out of fuel lightyears from any refueling station, left to drift until you either starved or suffocated.

  The hull looked like it was welded together with napalm. But it had managed to get to Backwater, which meant it had what it took to survive the Deep for at least a little while. And a little while at a time was all Bayne could focus on right now.

  The hiss of depressurization likely scared the fish away, which Bayne didn’t mind. No more interruptions. Several sets of feet marched down the ramp, moving with expediency and a lack of discipline. Their voices came through the comm on the dead man’s wrist.

  “Murph, where you at?” a gravelly voice said. “We’re at your coordinates.”

  They would spot Bayne momentarily. They always looked out over the water first. It drew their gaze like it had its own gravity. Then their eyes drifted to the shore and found him, like a hermit sitting on a log. They would move on him, likely leaving no one to guard the ship because, like most scavengers and hunters who ventured this far out, they were undisciplined and stupid.

  Once they moved twenty meters from their ship, it would be all over. Bayne would tug the line out of the water and drop them in his bucket.

  And that was exactly what happened.

  “There,” one of the newcomers said. They moved like a herd of deer scattered by a gunshot.

  Ten meters. Fifteen. Twenty…

  “Don’t move!” Wilco shouted. He stepped out of a thicket of trees between them and Bayne, cutting off their path forward.

  They laughed at the sight of the sixteen-year-old boy holding a blaster on the two of them. They stopped when Sigurd, Hepzah, and a team of three others appeared behind them, cutting them off from their ship.

  “I’ll thank you to drop those guns,” Wilco said.

  The men took him more seriously with the backing of a trained away team. They dropped their weapons. Wilco held the men while Sigurd and the rest of the team swept the interior of their ship.

  Sigurd emerged minutes later with his team, minus Hep. Sig walked past the men to Bayne.

  “Ship’s clear, sir,” Sig said.

  Bayne turned from the lake for the first time. He wished he hadn’t. He’d rather look out on the water and its unchanging surface than Sig’s face. Once youthful, joy bubbling beneath eyes that had seen the worst in people. He was always fidgeting, jumping at the chance to act, to move, to do. He was a terrible fit for a tour in the Deep now that Bayne thought about it. But his presence always set Bayne at ease.

  Now, looking on Sigurd’s tight expression, rarely ever cracking into that jovial smile, Bayne would sooner be nowhere near him. He only reminded Bayne of things he’d rather forget.

  “Hep’s cataloguing the inventory,” Sig said. He turned and marched back toward the men without word from Bayne.

  “Inventory?” one of the men said. “You mean the stuff on my ship. My stuff.”

  Bayne propped his pole against a rock, wedging it between the rock and the ground so it wouldn’t be dragged into the lake if he hooked a fish. He stood and faced the man. “I’ll be commandeering your stuff.”

  “Commandeering.” The man laughed. “You ain’t Navy no more. It’s just called stealing now.”

  Bayne looked at his hands. He looked at Sig, whose eyes fell to the dirt. “I’ll be stealing your stuff, then.”

  “Over my dead body—”

  The man’s voice ended in an abrupt and explosive flash.

  Smoke wafted from the barrel of Wilco’s blaster. Sigurd didn’t even flinch anymore.

  The other two bounty hunters froze solid, now standing over the dead bodies of two of their comrades.

  Bayne picked his belt up from a nearby stump. He tied it around his waist. The two blades—one black, one blue—hung on his hips. He lifted his holster off the limb of a small tree and looped it over his shoulder, so it draped across his chest, his dual pistols resting over his heart.

  He drew the black blade, the one Parallax called Malevolence. “Who put up the bounty?” They said nothing. They likely couldn’t if they wanted to, their jaws clenched so tight. Bayne put the tip of his blade to one the men’s cheek. He pressed, the slightest pressure, and blood beaded.

  The man winced but didn’t answer.

  With a seemingly effortless flick of his wrist, Bayne drew the point across the man’s cheek, carving a deep gash and splattering the ground with blood. The man dropped to his knees, screaming.

  Bayne pressed the tip of Malevolence to the second man’s chest. “Who put up the bounty?”

  The man squirmed, tripping over his words until he was finally able to spit some out. “Broker. Came through a broker.”

  Bayne pressed his sword harder into the man’s chest, cutting through layers of spacewalk suit with ease.

  “A middleman,” the bounty hunter. “Guy based on Teo, dumpy little station in the Black, near the Rigor Cluster.”

  Wilco sucked in through his teeth. “I know the place. Really is a dump.”

  “The broker’s name,” Bayne said.

  “Goes by Abbaghast. All I know.” He put out his hands like he was under arrest.

  Bayne shoved his sword through the man’s chest. Blood pooled in his mouth and trickled down his lip. Malevolence sang as Bayne pulled it from the man’s body.

  Hep emerged from the ship as the man hit the ground. He was the only one to give the dead a second look. He walked around them when the others stepped over them like they were logs or rocks or bags of garbage. He stood at Bayne’s side and read off a list of items he found aboard the hunters’ ship that could prove useful—foodstuffs, weapons and ammo, tech that could be broken down for parts or repurposed.

  “Take it all,” Bayne said. Hep made for the ship. As Wilco began to follow, Bayne gestured to the bodies. He didn’t say anything, but it was known what he wanted.

  Wilco stooped by each body like a vulture and picked them clean. Weapons and spacewalk suits. He threw them in a pile to be collected later.

  Bayne returned to his fishing pole. “Take your time,” he said, though the crew were already at work and out of earshot. “Could do without any interruptions for a while.”

  2

  The bridge was quiet. As it had been for weeks. Ironically, the quiet meant more work for Taliesin Mao. Typically one to appreciate solitude and the focus on duty, both had been wearing on him as of late.

  Unless they were in flight, Mao was the only one on the bridge. He was not ordered so, but he was not comfortable leaving the bridge unoccupied. A Navy ship’s bridge must always have at least one officer present.

  But, then, the Royal Blue was no longer a Navy ship. And he was no longer a naval officer. It would take him more than a few weeks to accept that as truth. If he ever did.

  Even if it weren’t for his attachment to Navy protocol, Mao would have found it unpleasant leaving the bridge. He knew this place. Regardless of the banner under which he sailed, keeping the ship sailing required the same things. They never changed. Everything on the ship had. Everything off the bridge was different.

  Their reasons for sailing. Their approach to conflict. Their relationship to every governing body in the galaxy. Their relationships to each other. All drastically different than they were a month ago.

  Their captain. Perhaps he had changed most of all. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he was the same man he’d always been and was only now letting it show. That thought bothered Mao most of all. The thought that nothing had changed, that he was only now seeing things for how they’d always been.

  “Mao,” a voice said over the general comm. Sigurd. “Pop the cargo bay.”

  “It went…well, then?” That description for what just happened made him ill, but he had no other words for it. It was
a success as far as achieving their intended goals of gathering supplies and information. But it hollowed them out a little each time.

  “Just pop the hatch,” Sigurd said.

  He did, then watched over the monitors as the supplies were loaded. His stomach lurched when he saw Wilco carrying what looked like several spacewalk suits.

  The captain walked in after everything was loaded, that damnable fishing rod slung over his shoulder, like he was on vacation. Mao shut off the monitors. He fell into his chair, the one that used to be reserved for Executive Officer Taliesin Mao and now belonged to just Mao. Fugitive from justice Mao. Pirate Mao.

  The comm hissed with static as it activated. A voice equally disjointed came through. “Captain about?” Elvin Horus. Former Navy captain. Former Byers Clan employee. Current drunk and Royal Blue crewman.

  “He just boarded,” Mao answered.

  “Good. I got some things need saying.”

  Mao sighed. “About?”

  “Huh? Oh, that mission he sent me on. So, a mission report, then. Tell him I got one of those. On my way back now.”

  Mao buried his face in his hands and ended the call. He looked up when Hep stormed on to the bridge and slammed a box of parts on the deck. “Something the matter?”

  Hep thought he was alone. He jumped at the sound of an unexpected voice. “No.”

  Mao pushed himself out of chair. “How many this time?”

  Hep stared at the box full of broken tech and random parts. “Three.”

  Mao was not a religious man. He never had been, even in childhood. His parents were atheists who worshipped science and logic. If he knew a prayer, he would have said it. Not for those three men, he knew what sort they were, but for those that had a hand in killing them. For those who grew used to killing with every passing day. For the young ones.