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  Nearly finished and again feeling like a lone tree trying to stand against the wind, he tried to remember how Kyte acted toward him when they first met. Bayne knew most of his memories were colored by fondness at this point. He wanted to cut through that haze and see the truth of it, but also he didn’t want to. He liked having a time to revisit the dreams that put him at peace.

  As he pondered his next step, Hep began sorting through the food on the tray. He took a bite of jerky and tried to politely spit it out.

  “No need to spare my feelings,” Bayne said. “It’s quite awful, but it reminds me of a different time. When things weren’t awful. You have anything like that?”

  “Things to help remember, or times that weren’t awful?”

  “Either,” Bayne said, trying not to sound pitying.

  “No.” Hep took a small bite from a piece of fruit and sat back in his chair.

  Talking to the boy was like pulling splinters from your hand. “Is he your brother?”

  “Wilco?” Hep seemed surprised by the question. “No.”

  “Figured. You two look nothing alike. I only ask because he said you two have always been together.”

  Hep’s eyes darted back and forth, an outward expression of the debate raging in his mind, trying to filter the information he gave away. “We were raised together. Kind of like brothers, I guess.”

  “So there was someone who raised you,” Bayne said hopefully. “You weren’t always slaves?” The boys had said this before, but he wanted to ask Hep when Wilco wasn’t there.

  Hep took another bite of fruit and used the time to determine his next response. “No, not always.” He left the thought open-ended, not slammed shut like all his others. Bayne resisted the urge to press further, hoping the boy would continue. And he did. “Grew up in an orphanage on Rally.”

  One of the southern rim planets. Bayne knew it as a popular refuel station during the warlord days.

  “We both lost our parents during the Ranger Wars.”

  Ranger Wars. Bayne had never heard it referred to as such. His Ranger pride compelled him to correct the boy, but his officer’s mentality urged him toward compassion. “I’m sorry.”

  Hep shrugged and took another bite. Each mouthful of the sweet fruit seemed to flavor Hep’s disposition. “Wasn’t an uncommon thing. Half the kids on Rally were on their own. Wilco looked after me. He’s a bit older. He’s the one that—”

  Hep froze, like he suddenly realized he was about to say something he shouldn’t.

  Bayne wanted to pry the information from the boy the way he pried the canopy off the watcher ship. He also wanted to pour the boy a drink and tell him to let the Deep Black take his past and look to the stars for a future, but Delphyne’s voice eliminated both options.

  “Sir, you’re needed on the bridge immediately. Mao has just made contact. We have a problem.”

  10

  Taliesen Mao was not the sort to entertain insubordination, insolence, or general disrespect. It was for that reason that he avoided children at all costs. The Navy was perfect for that. No children among its ranks. Between his duties and expectations as an officer, he had little time to take part in producing a child of his own. Little chance at all of him ever crossing paths with a child.

  Had it been a child, even, he could bear it. But a teenager? That was a situation for which he had not trained and which was not detailed in the officers’ handbook. He did know, at the least, that killing this particular teenager would certainly result in disciplinary action.

  “Come on, man,” Wilco said as he stepped over a drunk who’d passed out along the walkway of the Ore Town hangar bay. “You move slower than a sloth in zero-gee.”

  Mao clenched his jaw to keep from screaming. He shoved his hand in his pocket to keep it from the trigger of the blaster on his hip. He chose instead to study and observe. Though, doing so through Wilco’s incessant prattling did prove difficult.

  “What’s the deal with this place?” Wilco asked.

  “It’s a mining outpost owned and operated by the Byers Clan, a very wealthy and very powerful ally of the United Systems. We were planning a routine inspection after several failed attempts at communication.”

  Wilco didn’t seem to hear. Rather, he appeared to not pay attention. He was like a butterfly on the wind, taken wherever the breeze pleased. “Yeah.” The single syllable was heavier than it should be, full of something Mao didn’t fully comprehend. But he followed Wilco without inquiring.

  “Mining towns are usually organized around a central office,” Wilco said. “The bosses run the show from there. Usually the tallest building. They like to look down on us little folk.”

  “There,” Mao said, pointing to a cylindrical building twice the height of the next tallest. It was no prettier than the others, however. They all looked one stiff wind from toppling over. He hadn’t seen a Byers Clan operation firsthand, but their reputation was one of being even stricter than the Navy.

  “Yup,” Wilco said. He charted a course through crowded streets, cutting through the mass of soiled miners stinking of alcohol and cave tobacco like they weren’t even there.

  Mao watched the boy’s back, studying the way he moved. Not like any slave he’d seen before. There was no reservation in his gait, no echo of subservience in his posture. He moved with confidence. Though, the longer they walked, the more tense his shoulders became. The more guarded he seemed.

  The stench of liquor grew thicker in the air and became quite distracting. Mao had never liked it. Even before he enlisted, he wasn’t one for drinking. He disliked feeling like he was not in control of himself.

  “Let’s take a break,” Wilco said, ducking into a squat, metal-sided building lit with neon.

  Mao didn’t know what the place was until after stepping inside and allowing his eyes to adjust to the sudden lack of light. More stenches than just liquor hung on the air. Human stenches. This place was either a public toilet, or a bar.

  Wilco sat on one of the stools near the middle of the bar. Mao ordered the other two members of the away team, Sigurd and a Marine named Valek, to watch the door. Then he sat beside Wilco.

  “We are not here to drink,” the XO said. “Nor is this a suitable place for us to take a break.”

  “Try to seem a little less uptight,” Wilco said.

  Mao placed his hands on the bar, as far from his blaster as he could.

  “Rum,” Wilco said when the bartender stood before him. “Black, if you got it, eh?”

  The bartender looked to Mao, who waved his hand.

  “I’d rather not cause a scene, but if you do not rise from this stool immediately, I will drag you out of here by your neck.” Mao struggled to maintain the discipline in his voice.

  Wilco spun on his tool and smiled at Mao, a thin smile of amusement, not one of outright joy. “Now that sort of thinking will do you well here.” The bartender set a shot glass full of blackish-purple liquid on the bar. Wilco picked it up, waved it under his nose, and held it out for Mao to see. “You’re a learned type, ain’t ya? Fancy yourself observant?”

  Mao returned a cautious nod.

  “Then tell me what it is you observe in this here glass.”

  Assuming it a trick of some kind, Mao answered with a slice of sarcasm. “Alcohol. It is a liquid meant to induce inebriation and dull the senses.”

  “Black Baconium rum,” Wilco said with a nostalgic smile. “Rare around these parts. Know who favors it?”

  “Downtrodden minors?”

  Wilco slugged it back and slammed the glass on the bar. “Pirates.” He waved the bartender over for a refill.

  As the sloppy barman poured another, Mao took note of the tattoo of a black vortex on his forearm. Wilco slugged that shot down as soon as it was poured, then leaned back and inhaled deeply through his nose. He let out a hoot as he exhaled.

  “The black be damned, it’s been a long time since I’ve tasted rum.”

  Mao tried to appear casual as he turned on his s
tool, placing his elbow on the bar. He was not one for theatrics or subterfuge, nor had he ever been known for his casual air. He took stock of the room. A bar-back. Three patrons at a table in the corner. Two by the door. At least half of them were armed. Those with exposed arms sported that same black vortex tattoo.

  “What have you done?” Mao growled through clenched teeth. He suddenly wished he had indulged his darker impulses earlier.

  “I just wanted a drink,” Wilco said, brandishing that cocky smile like a knife.

  Luckily, Sigurd knew Mao well enough to recognize that something was wrong. He met the XO’s eye and followed it as it flicked around the room and then back to his blaster.

  Mao couldn’t be certain Sigurd caught the depth of the meaning, but the surface of it was enough. Sigurd’s stance changed, his weight planting on his back leg, his arms hanging loose and ready at his side. The chief of security gave a half-nod.

  Mao spun back around to face the bar, discreetly pulling his blaster as he did, keeping it hidden beneath the bar and pointed at Wilco. “Pardon me, barman. Might I have one of those black rums?”

  Wilco laughed.

  The bartender didn’t. He set the bottle and a glass down in front of Mao. “You pour it,” the bartender said. “I don’t serve Navy.”

  “Oops,” Wilco said through a chuckle. “Called your bluff.” Then Wilco grabbed the bottle by the neck and smashed it into the bartender’s face.

  The room erupted in chaos.

  The two men by the door lunged forward, drawing knives. Valek managed to pull his blaster and shoot one of them in the chest before the second one stuck his knife in Valek’s neck. Sigurd screamed as he pulled his dual blasters and put two shots in the man’s face.

  The three men in the corner rose, flipping the table and taking cover behind it. Blaster fire soon followed. Sigurd dove to the floor trying to cover his dying comrade. Mao and Wilco dove behind the bar.

  As Mao fired blindly, the bartender scrambled for the scatterblaster tucked under the bar. The concussion and the blood in his eyes slowed him enough for Wilco to leap onto his back. He still had the bottle in his hand. He brought it down once, and fine red mist sprayed into the air. He brought it down again with a sickening crack.

  Wilco dropped the bloody bottle like it was a piece of trash and not a murder weapon, opting for the scatterblaster instead. “Keep ‘em busy,” he said to Mao. The boy’s smile seemed eerie now, splattered with another man’s blood.

  Mao fired on the men again, and Sigurd joined him, forcing the men behind the table. Unseen, Wilco darted out from the other end of the bar and dove behind a pillar in the center of the room.

  As the men returned fired, Wilco flanked them, shredding the nearest to him with a shot from the scatterblaster. Sigurd ran on them as they tried to regroup and counterattack, catching them both off guard and riddling them with holes.

  The ensuing quiet was discomforting. Mao’s brain caught up to what had just happened, and he turned his sights on Wilco.

  Seeing the anger aimed his way, Wilco ran behind the bar again. He knocked several bottles of liquor aside. They smashed on the ground as Mao grabbed him by the collar and jabbed his blaster into the boy’s neck. The XO wasn’t quick enough to keep Wilco from pressing the red button that was hidden among the liquor, however.

  Metal panels slid over the windows. The door slammed shut and the bulky magnalock made sure it stayed that way.

  “Trapping us in here with you was not a good idea,” Mao growled.

  “Ain’t my intention,” Wilco said.

  “Aiming to keep us here until reinforcements arrive?” Sigurd said, trying ineffectively to pry open the door. “Security forces are likely on their way. Whatever pirate goons you got waiting to ambush us are going to get mowed down.”

  Wilco smiled at Mao. The XO found it unsettling, but somehow knew what Wilco was about to say. “You’re the observant one,” the boy said. “You saw it, didn’t you? On the docks.”

  Mao remembered the drunk man they stepped over. Too reckless for a Byers Clan operation. The black vortex tattoo on his arm flashed in Mao’s mind.

  “In the market,” Wilco said.

  The sting of a huddled mass of sweaty laborers still stuck in Mao’s nose. He shoved through the crowd, trying to keep pace with Wilco. He remembered the familiar bulk of blasters on their hips. And occasionally an unfamiliar one—long, cylindrical. A sword. He closed his eyes, focused on the memory. More black vortexes.

  And now this grisly scene. The bartender he knew. Mao released Wilco, but signaled for Sigurd to keep watch. Mao rolled one of the dead men over, checked his arm, the inside of his coat. Black vortex. Sword. The same with all of them.

  “Ore Town is infested with pirates,” Mao said.

  Wilco click his tongue. “So close. The place ain’t infested. It’s infiltrated. Taken over. The pirates own this place.” He made a show of looking around the bar. “And in case you ain’t noticed, Mister Observant, the bar-back managed to slip out. He’ll be returning. And he won’t be alone.”

  Mao silently cursed. “I need to contact the captain.”

  11

  Lieutenant Delphyne’s smile was obviously practiced, like a posed expression on a painted portrait. False. And the longer she held it, the more painful it became.

  “Speak, Lieutenant,” Bayne said. “What’s the trouble?”

  “If it pleases the captain, sir, I’d sooner have the XO explain it.”

  “No, it doesn’t please me at all. Someone tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Mao’s visage appeared on the monitor. “Hell is right, sir.”

  “Explain, XO.” Bayne’s patience was spent.

  “We’ve had a run in with a band of pirates, Captain. Six of them. All dead now.” Mao’s jaw tightened. “Valek is dead, too, sir.”

  Bayne’s chest lit on fire. “Explain further, XO.”

  Mao stepped aside, disappearing from the image. “I think he can explain it in more detail than I can, sir.”

  Wilco appeared on screen. “Hiya, Cap.” Mao’s hand reappeared long enough to smack Wilco in the back of the head. “Prick. Right, anyway, what we got here is something called an indigobird.”

  Hep sucked in a breath and his eyes went wide.

  “For those non-ornithologists,” Wilco said, “indigobirds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Eggs hatch, new momma bird raises the babies, while old momma bird goes about its business.”

  “How do birds equal trouble for me?” Bayne said.

  “Because, in this case, birds equal pirates,” Wilco said. “They probably infiltrated Ore Town months ago, years even, took jobs as miners, either worked, bribed or killed their way up the ladder until they had the access they needed.”

  “Access needed for what?”

  “To take over, Cap.” Wilco chuckled, but stopped when Mao’s hand reappeared and smacked him. “Once they were in position, they probably killed the managers and muckety mucks, lowered the drawbridge, and let their captain march on through.”

  Bayne hesitated in asking the question because he was afraid of the answer. “And who is their captain?”

  Wilco displayed a dead man’s arm and the black vortex tattoo on it. Bayne’s stomach twisted in a knot. “Parallax.”

  “Aye,” Wilco said.

  Mao reappeared on screen. “And because this fool opted to instigate a firefight rather than simply tell me what was happening, we are now locked in a bar, waiting for a horde of pirates to come knocking. A rescue would be appreciated.”

  “Hold tight, XO. I’ll make contact shortly.” Bayne signaled for the transmission to end. Once the monitor went black, Bayne snatched Hep up by the collar. “Did you know about this?”

  “No,” Hep stammered. “How could I?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re being straight with me. I think that once I get my people out of there, you two are going straight to Central to face treason charges.”

  Hep’
s eyes widened at that. But only for a brief moment before they narrowed again, took on a darker tone than usual. Such a minor yet significant change made him seem like a different person entirely.

  Bayne’s frustration leveled off and he could think straight again. He shoved Hepzah away. “What word from the Ore Town administrator?”

  “None,” Delphyne said. “I haven’t been able to make contact since they authorized us to land.”

  Pinching his temples, Bayne paced the bridge. “We can assume Parallax is aware of our presence here. The Black Hole could be here any second. Have shields gone up around Ore Town?”

  “No, sir,” Delphyne said.

  “What are they waiting for?” Bayne asked.

  An incoming hail answered his question. “Sir?” Delphyne seemed rattled. “Hail, sir. It’s the Ore Town administrator. He says he’d like a word.”

  Curious, Bayne thought. No signs of hostility or defense from Ore Town. No issue of threats or sign of the Black Hole. Just a word?

  “Maintain composure, everyone,” Bayne said, straightening his jacket. “We are not in an actively hostile situation. We don’t have all the facts. This is still recon.” He pointed at Hep. “Someone get him off my bridge.”

  A security officer escorted Hep away. Bayne nodded to Delphyne.

  A stout man appeared on screen. He wore a three-piece suit. Blue, pinstriped, the jacket hung open to show the vest and white shirt underneath. Despite the man’s attire, he did not project an air of formality. He leaned to one side, like he favored one leg, and cocked his head as though trying to see something from a certain angle. Mining executives and managers tended to be even more uptight than Navy officers.

  “Captain,” the man said, his wide smile seeming somewhat forced. “On behalf of the Byers Clan, welcome to Ore Town. I am Jarmin Tetch, head of the local mining guild and administrator of this fair town.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mister Tetch,” the captain said. “Though, to be fair, I’ve yet to actually come to Ore Town.”

  “Right,” Jarmin chuckled. “So it seems. My communications team tells me you’ve had trouble making regular contact recently. Some of the ores we mine down here play havoc with our relays. Wonky magnetic and radioactive properties. Apologies.”