Ranger Bayne Read online

  “That’s right,” Mao said. “As opposed to the Navy ship, which is run to the captain’s will alone, whose directive is, in turn, dictated by Central. The crew is bound by duty, not loyalty. These people are here now out of loyalty to you. Reward that and your fears of rebellion will diminish.”

  The devilish smile spread across Bayne’s face, and Mao had never been so pleased to see it. “I’ll take your advisement into consideration, XO.” Bayne stood and gestured toward the door, signaling for Mao that he could leave.

  Mao, instead, remained seated. “Perhaps you’d like to begin right now. By telling me why we’re sailing into the Rickard Sea and what role the former Lieutenant Delphyne still has in the running of this ship?”

  The devilish smile only spread wider. “I like you free of the shackles of protocol, Taliesin. You’re craftier than you’re given credit for.” He refreshed his drink and brought a picture up on the monitor over his desk. “Do you know who this is?”

  The man, though he could barely be called such, looked to be in his early twenties. His eyes shone with the arrogance of youth and money, his smile with cold indifference. His blond hair was nearly white, striped with thin strands of red.

  Mao shook his head.

  “Jaxwell Byers,” Bayne said. “Eldest son of Jasper Byers, patriarch of the Byers Clan. Jaxwell runs the clan’s mining operations in this sector of the Deep Black, a task he thinks well beneath him.”

  “Also a task that puts him in charge of the operation at Ore Town,” Mao said.

  “Precisely that,” Bayne said.

  “And what does Delphyne have to do with this man?”

  Bayne sat on the edge of his desk. His faced changed from that of a man in the midst of devilment to a man about to say something he knew would elicit anger. “I asked Delphyne for one last favor before she left. She was conflicted. She wanted a new life, a new start, but she also wanted to serve. She just couldn’t, in good conscience, serve aboard this ship any longer. So, I got her a new identity.” He sipped his drink. “And a job as Jaxwell Byers’s executive assistant.”

  Mao shot up from his chair. “Are you mad?”

  “Quite pleased, actually,” Bayne said. “My plan has just borne fruit.”

  “You’ve put her in extreme danger. She’s alone in the lion’s den.”

  “Jaxwell Byers is a whiny child who complains all day that daddy doesn’t love and respect him. He is hardly a lion.”

  Mao paced the small distance from the door to the bed, hand running compulsively through his hair. “The Byers Clan wants you dead as much as the Navy, and they’ve fewer qualms about murdering you outright. The Navy would at least put you on trial.”

  “Debatable.”

  Mao wanted to yell. Just when he thought he was making progress with the captain, Bayne took two steps into the dark. “You did exactly what she was afraid you would do. You crossed a line, and now she is at risk.”

  “Delphyne agreed to this.” The anger was rising in Bayne’s throat. “Of her own free will, just as you said. I didn’t order her. She wasn’t a member of my crew anymore. She knew the risks and she took them because she knows the payoff.”

  “You’ve pushed her into the grey area she never wanted to be in. She is a sailor. She follows a code. Right and wrong. She does not step in and out of shadows as you do.” Mao realized then that he wasn’t speaking just of Delphyne.

  “Maybe she isn’t as naïve as you think her to be,” Bayne said. “That code you follow is a lie. The Navy never abided by it. I took a page straight from their book. And from Parallax’s.” Bayne slammed his glass down on his desk, splattering rum all over. “Because they follow the same damn book. I planted someone in the Byers operation, so she could gather intel, so she could help me sort this mess out and put it right.”

  Bayne focused on calming his trembling hands, on steadying his breath. “According to Delphyne, Jaxwell is responsible for the contracts. She’s forwarded me his itinerary. We know where he’s going to be and when. And we are going to have a conversation with him.”

  Mao stood at attention. Out of habit. Or because he knew that it would bother Bayne. But, in honesty, because it was one of the few ways in which Mao could cling to the code he still needed to follow. “Yes, Captain.”

  9

  The Rickard Sea was both dangerous and boring. It was mostly vast nothingness, an expanse of empty space, but it was pocked with gravity wells and solar storms. They cropped up at random intervals and each encounter was tumultuous enough that it could destroy a ship. That meant constant vigilance when mostly nothing happened. The combination made for an exhausting and frustrating trip.

  Add to that the Byers presence, and the Royal Blue was on edge even more than usual. Also, Mao and Bayne seemed to want to kill each other more than usual, so that didn’t help things.

  Wilco wasn’t as bothered by the tension as the others seemed to be. So fragile, they all were. They claimed to be sailors of the Navy, the most elite in the system, yet they were bickering and sniping at each other like children in a schoolyard.

  That bothered him more than anything else—the whining, the second-guessing, the attempts at undermining Bayne. Mao was the worst offender. The guy didn’t say much, and when he did, it was wooden and boring and seemingly placid, but his eyes burned with something Wilco had seen in the eyes of every second-in-command he’d ever come across—the desire to lead. He thought he’d do a better job in the captain’s chair.

  Wilco was no stranger to challenging a captain. It was a regular occurrence among pirates. If an XO thought the captain was failing at his duties, he would challenge him for the right to lead. Sometimes formally. Sometimes with a knife in a dark hallway.

  The sidelong glances and hushed voices were beginning to grate on Wilco. He preferred a straight-up fight.

  Hepzah was in the communications room preparing a channel. The two hadn’t spent much time together in recent weeks. Preferring the action, that was where Wilco found himself. He wasn’t so sure Bayne had fully forgiven Hep’s near betrayal to Tirseer. The captain said he understood, that Hep was targeted by the best spy in the system, but Wilco didn’t buy the amnesty act. From either of them. How could Bayne so easily forgive something like that? How could Hep reconcile what he did with his continued presence on the ship?

  Maybe that was why Hep was always in a dark room, elbow deep in the ship’s guts, alone.

  Didn’t matter. Hep didn’t need protecting anymore. He wasn’t a child.

  “All hands,” Mao’s voice said over the ship’s general comm. “Secure your persons. We are now approaching mark A.”

  The tumultuous nature of the Rickard Sea made it a real pain to navigate, but it was smack in the middle of the quickest route from this sector of the Deep Black to the central planets, meaning it was essential for mining operations to move their ore. The frigates still made the voyage. That made it prime opportunity for pirates to hide amongst the turmoil and pick off miners with their minds on navigating.

  Or recently disavowed naval captains. There wasn’t much of a difference.

  Wilco burst into a run at the news. He wanted to be in the shuttle bay. It was the most open space on the ship, and the most secluded. Few spent time there if they could avoid it. It was by the engines and, so, the loudest space too, and it smelled strongly of ionized air and solvents, a metallic combination that stung the lungs.

  He rounded the final turn, the shuttle bay door now in view, as Mao’s second alert sounded over the comm.

  “Now positioned at mark A. Activating lockdown procedures.”

  Wilco pushed his legs harder, his muscles flooding with blood and adrenaline. He passed the threshold into the shuttle bay just as the bulkhead doors slammed shut. Lockdown procedures meant sectioning off the ship in case of hull breaches. Any damage from loss of atmosphere would be contained to specific sections of the ship.

  A rush of victory flooded Wilco as he scanned the bay. Empty. Perfect. He was as far
from the bridge as he could be. As far from where the decisions were made, where responsibility lay.

  “What are you doing here?” Hep stepped out from behind a stack of crates.

  “Seriously?” Wilco said, throwing up his arms. “Figured this was the only place on the ship where I wouldn’t get locked up with someone who insisted on talking to me. Guess I was wrong.”

  “No worries,” Hep said as he walked away. “Don’t much feel like talking.”

  Wilco suddenly hoped for a hull breach. “Good,” he said. Once the words left his mouth, he wanted nothing more than to talk. He tried to find other ways to pass the time as they waited for the word from the bridge. He paced, twirled his dagger, paced some more. “Why?” he said after an excruciating two minutes. “I get the feeling you’re pissed about something. Pissed at me?”

  Hep’s expression barely changed. Even knowing him for years, he was hard to read. “No.”

  Wilco twirled his knife some more. “Then what the hell is your problem? So broody all the time. What do you have to complain about?”

  Hep’s face was easy to read now, twisted with surprise. “Are you kidding me? We’re fugitives.”

  “We’ve been fugitives all our lives,” Wilco said.

  “But for once, we had a chance to be something else. We got out of the pirate life. Bayne let us stay on the ship. We could have—”

  “What?” Wilco interrupted. “Joined the Navy? Become sailors?” He laughed.

  Hep looked like a child again. The naïve kid that Wilco was always protecting. The kid who was always staring off at the stars and hoping that fantasy would become real life. “I don’t know. Why not?”

  “Because we aren’t like them,” Wilco said. “They march around like robots, doing what they’re told when they’re told. They’d walk out into the Black if they were ordered to. Mindless sheep. Not us. We’re alive because we’ve always done what we needed to, not what we’re told to.” Wilco’s eyes narrowed, and his face turned dark. “You remember the orphanage?”

  Hep froze. His lower lip quivered.

  “All the kids there,” Wilco continued. “The ones who did what they were told, you remember what happened to them?”

  Hep squirmed. “This isn’t like that.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” Wilco said. “They all ended up working on the street, giving themselves over to whatever the bosses wanted. They’re slaves. We find ways to be free in a system designed to put us in chains. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we got here with Bayne. The chance for it, at least. Bayne broke the chains the Navy put on him. We stick with him, we never get put in chains again.”

  Wilco’s chest heaved. He twirled his knife and paced the floor, muttering and cursing under his breath.

  “Bayne is going to get us killed,” Hep finally said.

  “And the Navy wouldn’t?” Wilco shot back. “Or working the mines on some Byers-owned moon? Or just starving in an alley? People like us don’t have options.”

  Time stretched on in silence for half an hour. Hep tightened into a ball the way he did as a kid, sitting in the corner of the broom closet of the orphanage before the bedtime bell. Wrapped up like an armadillo sensing the coming danger.

  “How long we supposed to be in lockdown?” Wilco said.

  Hep looked at him like he just remembered he was there. “Until the target’s in sight. We’re hiding behind a gravity well. Messes up sensors. They can’t see us on radar, but we can’t see them coming either. Need to rely on manual confirmation.”

  “Eyeballs,” Wilco said. “Just say eyeballs. Maybe you should join the Navy.”

  That brought a slight smile to Hep’s face.

  But that smile disappeared at the sudden tearing of metal and the scream of alarms as a chunk of the hull was ripped away.

  10

  “What the hell just happened?” Bayne shouted.

  “Hull breach,” Tech Officer Menard answered. “The shuttle bay.”

  “Were we attacked?” Mao asked.

  “No, sir,” Menard said. “No signs of any ships. It looks like a portion of the hull was ripped off. Most likely a surge from the gravity well. Sudden burst of hyper-focused gravity.”

  “Anyone in the shuttle bay?” Bayne asked.

  “Shouldn’t be,” Menard answered. “The shuttle bay isn’t a designated lockdown site.”

  “All hands report in,” Mao ordered over the general comm.

  Lights began flashing on the personnel monitor as each crew member activated a beacon alerting the bridge as to their status. Flashing light meant they were alive enough to activate it when ordered to. No light meant the opposite. Within seconds, all the beacons had been activated.

  All but two.

  “Sigurd, with me,” Bayne yelled as he ran off the bridge. “Mao, find a way to keep the ship together.”

  Bayne and Sigurd sprinted down the corridor, stopping at each lockdown barricade. Bayne swiped his card, granting him executive access to override the protocol. The barricades lowered, then raised as soon as the men passed through.

  They stopped at an emergency station just outside the shuttle bay and grabbed four oxygen masks. They put theirs on, nodding an acknowledgement of readiness to each other, then opened the door.

  The sucking vacuum greeted them. Had they the time, they would have put on spacewalk suits and used the accompanying magboots to secure themselves to the floor. As it was, Hep and Wilco had been locked in the shuttle bay for more than two minutes. Assuming backup protocols kicked in, secondary oxygen supplies would have begun pumping into the room at the moment of breach.

  But if backup protocols had enacted properly, then shield patches would have spread over the breach and they wouldn’t be fighting against the vacuum at all right now.

  Bayne gripped the edge of the doorway, squeezing so tight he felt the joints in his fingers pop. Sig used the momentum of the pull, launching himself like a missile toward a stack of metal crates halfway between the door and the breach. He slammed into the crates then grasped at the straps securing them to the floor to keep from being sucked out.

  Once they were inside the bay, Bayne raised the lockdown barrier, sealing them inside. “Any sign of them?” Bayne said to Sig through comms.

  “No,” Sig answered. “But I can’t—” He tried to inch toward the edge of the crates to get a view of the rest of the room.

  Bayne climbed to the left edge of the room, along the netting that secured smaller containers to the wall. Once he reached the far wall, he caught sight of them. One of them, at least. His view was obstructed by a wall panel torn loose.

  “I have eyes on them,” Bayne said. “Left wall.”

  “On my way,” Sig said.

  “No,” Bayne said. He looked past the boy to the hole in the hull. The shield patch had deployed, but shrapnel had lodged into a section of it, leaving a gap in its cover. “I’ll get to him. You see what you can do about that shield patch.”

  “Aye,” Sig said.

  Bayne scanned the area for suitable stepping stones. A stack of crates a few yards away. Another a few yards from that. Then the netting to which the boy clung. He aimed himself like a missile at the crates and pushed off the wall.

  He didn’t anticipate the speed at which he shot through the air, so he wasn’t ready when he slammed into the crates. The impact forced the breath from his lungs. His vision darkened along the edges, but he forced the threat of unconsciousness back. He flattened his body against the flat metal surface and felt the pull of the vast emptiness on his insides.

  He gripped the edge of the crates and pulled himself along like a snake. He curved his body over the corner and pressed off the crate just as the pull became too strong to resist. The next stack of crates seemed to come at him like a speeding truck. It crashed into him, and everything went dark.

  He gasped as consciousness came screaming back, adrenaline spiking his heartrate. From his new position, he could see the boy clearly. Boys. Hep had his arm
laced through the netting on the wall. It looked ready to tear off, and he looked near unconscious. His head hung forward. His eyes closed. Face red from the strain. In his other arm, he clutched onto Wilco, who was limp and bleeding from the head.

  He yelled to the boys but knew they couldn’t hear him over the sucking sound of life being dragged out into the vacuum. One last leap lay between Bayne and the boys. The most impossible leap yet. He needed to get straight across the gap between the crates and the netting. He needed to fight the pull, in the open space, without losing any ground. If he moved too far toward the breach, he risked crashing into the boys. Then they would all get sucked out into the void.

  An idea flashed in his head. One he knew he shouldn’t have. The kind of idea that should be pushed down the moment it crops up.

  The straps that secured the crates could be undone easily enough. And one of them was long enough that he could use it as a grappling hook to reach the netting. Only, once he undid one of them, one of the crates would hurtle toward the breach—where Sigurd was currently working on restoring the patch.

  Risk Sig to save Hep and Wilco. The math was simple and straightforward. Two for one. But math didn’t matter with people. It never added up right.

  As he reached for the strap, his hand brushed the handle of his sword. A new idea flashed in his head. Maybe not a more efficient one, but the numbers were better. He drew the blue blade and stabbed it into the side of the crate. He inched around the edge and placed his feet on the blade, using it to brace against the pull. Then he drew the black blade.

  Before the force of the vacuum could pull him off his perch, Bayne dove toward the wall. He stabbed the black blade into it. The pull was such that, after the blade pierced the wall, it still pulled Bayne backward, dragging the blade through solid metal. The blade came to a steel beam, a seam in the wall, and stopped. Bayne was only feet from the boys now, close enough to reach out and grab them.

  “Hep!” He yelled the boy’s name to no response. He grabbed the netting with his free hand, then released the sword. Bayne wove his legs through the netting, ensuring he would not be pulled free. He leaned back, and the vacuum pulled his upper body around the side of the boys.