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  “Cannons,” Bayne answered without thinking. Standard protocol: Defense is always priority number one. If the choice between offense and defense arises, the captain must always choose protecting his ship.

  “Aye,” Callet said, taking a tablet from his pocket and tapping out instructions. “I’ll get on it right away, sir. Nonessential systems will be down as I make the adjustments.”

  “I’ll make the announcement. Let me know when it’s done.”

  The thought of stepping onto the bridge was exhausting. The thrum of energy, whether it was excitement or anger at returning to Central, was more than Bayne could stand. He opted to skip it and call in his orders from his cabin instead.

  It wasn’t the surge of excitement that wiped him out. It was those boys. The uncertainty in their eyes. Every action guarded. Every word carefully measured, careful not to betray themselves as they spoke.

  Their physical state seemed all right, to an untrained eye. A bit malnourished maybe, but they were intact. Unlike most of the slaves he’d seen when he had the misfortune of crossing paths with slavers in the early days. Eyes so swollen from beatings, they couldn’t open. Limbs hacked off as punishment. Some seemed to keep slaves purely as a means of sadistic satisfaction rather than economic gain.

  Bayne had wanted to kill those men. He wanted to lash them all to the hull and burn through atmosphere until their ashes were all that was left when they hit the open black.

  But there was a code among the Rangers—you left one to his own business as long as it didn’t interfere with yours. That was the entire point—to be left alone.

  Codes. Protocol. Always something telling him what he could and couldn’t do.

  He called his orders to the bridge from the comm at his desk. Delphyne issued the ship-wide notice.

  “Attention all crew, the ship will be going brown at oh-eight-hundred. Repeat, we will be running on essential systems only.”

  The green bottle on the corner of his desk—half-heartedly hidden between two massive texts, United Navy Standards & Protocols and The Classification of Deep Space Vessels—stared at Bayne. It had been tucked in there so long, he forgot it was still half-full of Bacconian rum. It had become a fixture on his desk, a bookend. An ironic one at that.

  Chapter Three, section A of United Navy Standards & Protocols: An Officer’s Comportment: No officer, while on official duty or in uniform, shall consume alcohol or similarly affecting substances.

  But gods of the black be damned if this wasn’t a day that called for a little breach of protocol. And what better breach of protocol was there than one that tastes of the green sands of Baccuniae? He popped the cork and held it to his nose. One deep inhale set his head swimming. Another, and he felt his entire being drop into a lagoon, water like a Sunday bath swallowing him, sea salt rubbing the day from his body. A mouthful, and he fell onto his bed.

  His heels banged against the lavender trunk. Bayne set the bottle down, and for the second time in nearly two years, pulled the trunk from its hiding place. When he popped the lock, as if an omen, the lights went black, and the faint glow of secondary lighting cast over him.

  Fortunately, among the artifacts in the trunk was an old wax candle and book of matches. Captain Kyte’s quarters were always littered with them. He said that sometimes people forget that simple problems have simple solutions, and that so many more “complex” problems could easily be solved if one realized that they weren’t so complex after all. The fire served to remind him how simple things could be.

  Bayne lit the wick and set the candle on the floor. He sunk into the flickering flame, watched it dance and felt like he was on the beach again, some hand running up his back and through his hair, the salty breeze carrying the warm air up to his nose. It smelled like roasting meat and wood smoke.

  Bayne sorted through the trunk. Small mementos mostly, small things of small significance. Little triggers for fond memories. But some of them blew holes in his mind, holes large enough for the past to charge through. It was a past he thought he had put behind him, one that he had reckoned with and moved beyond as he built this new future. It seemed now that he had never truly believed that. Why else did he have this trunk if not to carry the past with him?

  Maybe the box wasn’t a container of mementos. Maybe it was Pandora’s Box. Since opening it, his past had been flooding back like a relentless wave. His eyes fell on the pair of bloody swords. He reached for them, hands trembling. With fear or with excitement, he didn’t know.

  He ran his finger down the black blade. As beautiful a thing as he’d ever seen. It called to him like a siren, luring him toward a raging cliffside that he could not see.

  Bayne slammed the lid shut, quieting the song. He corked the bottle and blew out the candle. He lay on his bed, looking at ceiling, feeling his heart pound against his ribs.

  Just then, his computer chimed with a suitable distraction. He opened it and clicked the icon flashing in the center of the screen. A message from Dr. Simmons. The results of the boys’ examinations.

  They were mostly as he expected. Slightly malnourished. Some vitamin deficiencies. Bone density showed a lengthy time in zero-gravity, but something about those boys didn’t sit right with Bayne. Something unseen tugged at an area of his mind full of shadows.

  It was probably just the liquor.

  He shut the computer and sank back into his bed.

  He wasn’t asleep long. At least, he didn’t think he was. He didn’t feel at all rested. Though his heart was in his throat and all his senses were heightened with adrenaline burning through him.

  The ship shook again. Violently.

  “Sir,” Delphyne said over comms. “We’re under attack. It’s the Black Hole.”

  6

  The bridge was an eerie place cast in the pale secondary light. Like it was a dead place, or somewhere meant for reverence. It counteracted the need for action.

  “Report,” Bayne shouted as he stormed onto the bridge. “Get me a report, now.”

  “It came up on us before we knew it was there, sir,” Delphyne said. “Long-range sensors were powered down.”

  “Shields are holding, sir,” Callet said. “For now.”

  “Get down to engineering, Callet, and get our systems back up,” Bayne ordered. Callet moved faster than his stout frame should have allowed. “Mao, alert Central.”

  “The emergency beacon was taken out immediately, sir,” Mao said. “Deep space communications are powered down. Without either, we cannot alert Central.”

  “Well, where in the black did it come from?” Bayne’s frustration got the better of him. “It didn’t just appear out of nowhere. How did it find us?” He knew the answer before Delphyne said anything.

  “The Blighter, sir. We picked up a signal when it exploded. Just a quick burst. We didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  Bayne growled into his fist. “Someone give me some options.”

  One immediate option jumped into his head. Death. The Black Hole had a reputation. An uncorroborated one, because most who’d seen it were dead now. It tore through ships like tissue paper and only appeared when it intended to destroy. It sucked life into its maw like its namesake, crushing it to nothingness.

  “Has the captain made contact?” Bayne asked. The mention of his existence froze them all in place. “Has Parallax made contact?” The mention of his name shook them from their frozen fear like a syringe of adrenaline to the heart.

  “No, sir,” Delphyne answered. “Their attack didn’t seem intended to destroy. A shot across the bow, perhaps. Their weapons are charged and locked.”

  Bayne had spent his first months on assignment in the Deep Black studying the pirate Parallax’s methods. His reputation was such in Central Command that he had earned nomination as the system’s most wanted criminal. He was also the most feared, and because he knew how to wield fear as a weapon, he wanted them to sit and soak in their anxiety, like a roast in its juices.

  Parallax’s first move was
to disable the ship. Then he would let it sit, giving the crew enough time to get a distress call out before blasting them to space garbage.

  But the long-range comms were down, so they couldn’t—

  “Sir, techs say they can have long range comms back up in two minutes,” Delphyne said.

  “No,” Bayne answered. “Tell them to hold.”

  Mao stepped to Bayne’s shoulder and spoke so only the captain could hear. “What are you thinking?” He asked it without accusation, in a way that showed he knew the captain had a plan.

  “In all of the Black Hole’s encounters I’ve studied, Parallax deliberately allowed the ship to make outside contact. He wants their distress call to serve as a warning, to spread his reputation. Sometimes he uses it to draw out any other ships in the area.”

  “You think damaging the long-range relay was unintentional,” Mao said.

  Bayne nodded.

  “So fixing it may cause the Black Hole to fire on us,” Mao surmised.

  “It’ll fire regardless, eventually, but this may buy us some time.”

  Mao seemed to agree, or like he was about to, before he was interrupted.

  “Won’t work,” Wilco said.

  The sudden and unexpected arrival on the bridge caught everyone by surprise, and had they not been in the midst of deadly conflict, it would have elicited much rage on Bayne’s behalf as well.

  “What the blazes are you doing on my bridge?” It elicited only a modicum of rage.

  “Ruse won’t work,” Wilco repeated. “He’ll know.”

  “Boy,” Mao said, “Exit this bridge immediately.” Mao didn’t seem to notice Hepzah standing a few feet back.

  Wilco shrugged and walked toward the exit. “Hey, if y’all wanna die, whatever. Where’re your escape pods?”

  Hepzah stood rooted. “He’s watching. Parallax. He’ll know you’re not really trying to fix the relay unless you have someone outside actually working on it.”

  “At that distance?” Mao said, pointing to the viewport. “They can’t see our hull in such detail.”

  “Not that distance,” Hep said. “He’s got eyes closer.”

  Mao looked to Delphyne. “No ship readings, sir,” she said. “Just us and the Black Hole.”

  Mao looked to the boys and silently repeated his command for them to leave.

  “Single-person craft don’t show up on scanners,” Hep said. He did so in such a plain manner that Delphyne didn’t even wait for orders to recalibrate the scanners and cameras on the hull. He didn’t sound like a child.

  “We have contact, sir,” she said before Mao could object to her following the word of these trespassers. “Two contacts.”

  “On screen,” Bayne ordered.

  The viewport flickered and an image of the top of the ship appeared. There, looking like two distant stars, glinted the metal bodies of two small personal transports, smaller than an escape pod, big enough to hold one body.

  The nagging feeling in the back of Bayne’s mind screamed at the two boys standing on his bridge. Bayne quieted the voice. He couldn’t lend his ear to it now, as something else was screaming at him presently. “Get a tech outside,” he said to Mao. “With orders to fix the relay. Slowly.”

  Mao marched past the boys, making no effort to hide his displeasure at their existence.

  “Callet,” Bayne said into comms. “Boost shields as much as possible and reroute remaining power to thrusters. Take it from whatever systems you have to. Don’t throw the switch until I give the word.”

  “Aye, sir,” answered the chief engineer.

  A lull fell over the bridge as the crew rested in a holding pattern, waiting for news from engineering or the captain or the Black Hole.

  The one who dared break the silence was the one who absolutely should not have. “Captain,” Wilco said. “Your plan’s good and all, but I got one that will keep us all from dying.”

  Bayne wanted to smack the insolent little bastard, but that fell well outside the bounds of acceptable officer behavior. Instead, he listened.

  And he was glad he did.

  7

  The tech’s suit stank of sweat and fear. The helmet barely fit over his head, and the breather pressed firmly against his nose and mouth so that he could barely speak. The whole thing gave him a sense of claustrophobia so intense that he nearly scrapped the entire operation.

  Which would have been precisely to Mao’s pleasure. “I must reassert how utterly terrible of an idea this is, sir. Not to mention how many protocols it violates. Namely, all of them.”

  Bayne latched the helmet, and a hissing sound signaled that it was vacuum sealed. He breathed in and his mouth filled with the taste of the last tech’s breath. He made a mental note to have Mao inspect them all more regularly to ensure proper maintenance and cleaning.

  “That’s not necessary,” Bayne said to his executive officer. “Your displeasure at my plans is always noted in advance.”

  Mao reluctantly placed a sniper rifle in his captain’s hand, his jaw clenched and eyes flaring uncharacteristically with anger, betraying his typically stoic nature. “Someone else can do this.”

  “I volunteered,” Sigurd said. “Captain wouldn’t have it.”

  Bayne checked the rifle, adjusted the scope, squeezed the grip, felt the trigger. “Because you can’t do it. No one can. No one’s trained for something like this, and now isn’t the time to learn.”

  “And you’ve trained for something like this?” Mao asked.

  Bayne felt the weight of the two swords hanging on his belt. “I’ve had some experience.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder and gestured to a crate on the floor. Mao handed it to him.

  “You’re putting a lot of trust in the word of a couple boys we know nothing about,” Mao said. “Putting your life on the line. Putting all our lives on the line.”

  The words cut through the suit, through his skin, and embedded into Bayne’s bones. He assured himself that this was the right move, the only way to save his ship and his crew. That when facing pirates, one needed to sometimes behave like a pirate. Crafty, underhanded, think outside the protocols. He wasn’t doing this just so he could get out there. Because he missed it.

  “This is the best way with the time we’ve got.” He took the crate and marched toward the airlock. “Ship’s yours until I’m back aboard,” he said to Mao. “Take good care of her.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The airlock door slid open, and Bayne stepped in. This is the only way, he repeated to himself. The right way to save my crew. It’s not—

  His thoughts were cut short by the hissing sound of oxygen being sucked into the void. And the emptiness that spread out before him. Such a beautiful stretch of nothing.

  “Ready, sir?” Callet’s voice sounded in his ear, budging him from his frozen awe.

  “On the move,” Bayne answered. With just a tiny flick of his ankle, he drifted out of the Royal Blue, tethered by only a safety cable. His mind emptied to match the weightlessness of his body. He thought nothing of his responsibilities as captain, or the dire circumstances they were now in, or having to report this extreme breach of protocol to Central. He just floated. The sense of claustrophobia melted away with the sense of any barriers. There was nothing.

  Callet was his inner voice. “Remember, sir, you need to appear to be a technician. Which means you need to move with all the confidence of one. A tech doesn’t waste time or movement when he’s out in the vacuum. He gets the job done and comes back in.”

  Such a missed opportunity, Bayne thought, but Callet was right. Parallax’s men were watching. And they would know if he wasn’t who he was supposed to be.

  Get to the relay. Fix the relay. That was what they needed to see him do.

  “How goes the reconfiguration, Callet?”

  “Well, Captain. We’re less than two minutes away.”

  “And Delphyne?”

  “Course charted, sir.”

  Then it was just his part of the plan tha
t needed to be done. The pressure was like a shot of rum. It burned on the way down but put a rhythm in his feet. Bayne had little time in the hangar to reacquaint himself with the controls of the spaceflight suit, but it came back quickly. He hadn’t realized how much time he spent daydreaming about the old days, reliving the ships he’d boarded as a member of Kyte’s boarding party. He’d been longing for a day when he could do this again and unknowingly practicing in the process.

  He squeezed the pinky finger of his left hand, activating the thrusters on that side of the suit, spinning him around to face the ships. Then he squeezed the pinky fingers of both hands, propelling him forward. As he neared, he pressed his feet together, activating the thrusters on the bottom of his boots. He moved upward and was soon looking down at the top of the hull and the scorched wreckage of the ship’s long-range communications relay.

  “I see the relay. Making my approach.” As he descended, he took note of the two glints in his periphery. They were close enough that he could make out their outline against the blackness around them, but no more detail than that.

  The mag-clamps on his boots hummed when Bayne activated them. He felt them pull him down when close enough to the hull. With a thud, he was on solid ground again.

  Callet walked him through the process of looking busy. He knelt beside the wrecked relay and popped the lock on the crate. As it opened, half a dozen tools, all tethered to the inside of the crate, came floating out. They resembled tiny, malformed babies dangling from their metallic mother.

  He grabbed what looked like some sort of wrench and began tinkering with the relay. He had never been mechanically inclined. He was apprenticed to the mechanic on the Supernova for a time, but every party involved quickly realized that was a disaster. He was a decent actor, however.

  “Reconfiguration complete, sir,” Callet said. “Ready to flip the switch.”