by C. Vandyke
Tears streamed down Dillinger's ruined face. Hope reached up and touched him gently, feeling his grief and anger through his scarred flesh. He bent low to touch his forehead against hers.
"A Roman general once said: 'What we do now, echoes in eternity.'" He whispered, "I once thought my love for you would be that echo—but now my only legacy will be blood and vengeance."
"Grace is on Restless Home—held in an abandoned equipment hangar. Go to her, rescue her," Hope gasped. "Be her hero—be the parent I was not."
"I can't," he replied. "You told them to expect me, didn't you? You or Rollo. If I go after her, they'll kill us both. You've damned us all."
A tear ran down her cheek and fell onto his hand. "I'm sorry..." Her voice was growing weak. "I wasn't strong enough..."
"Neither of us were," he said, holding her tight. "God, I love you, Hope."
"I love you... too... Muffy." She trembled like a leaf in his arms. Then her whole body convulsed for a moment and went limp. He closed her sightless eyes and laid her body on the deck.
"Pickering." Dillinger's voice was horse and raw. "I'm coming aboard. Contact Wulf."
"Wulf, this is Dillinger. If you don't know already, the Duchess Grace is on Restless Home—behind the stairs marked 38-DD on the map, in an abandoned equipment hangar. Braddock and the cult were paid to kidnap her by the Dowager—it was part of a revenge fantasy that went wrong. She was working with a corrupt Revenue Service Inspector named Rollo—I took him out after he killed the Dowager, but his goons might still be lurking about. They'll be expecting me—so I have to leave the duchess' safety in your hands—I'll try to set up a distraction for you if I can.
"Whatever you do—make sure that kid is delivered home safe and with all her fingers and toes accounted for. There are a lot more people invested in her good health and safety than you might imagine.
"Good luck... or for the glory of Ludan or whatever. Cheers, mate. Dillinger out."
For the first time in years, Dillinger spent a sleepless night completing a job without a single drop of drink to sustain him. He turned off all Pickering's audio prompts and sat in the dark, waiting.
Finally, the message arrived.
"Package is secure with all digits. Being cleaned and sent to Dauntless III. Package has a warrior's heart and maintained its honour—with blood."
Dillinger smiled.
"That's my girl," he whispered.
Two days later...
The retiring Sector Senior Inspector Nettles took one final look around his empty office at the end of his last day. Nothing of his personal history, or indeed his personality, remained.
The message light on his monitor was blinking. He leaned forward and triggered the replay. A text message appeared.
"This was your fault, Dom.
"You never considered Hope's rage when you let slip that I was alive, did you? You could have explained it to her—rather than letting her think I abandoned her and Grace. Hell, if you'd simply kept your mouth shut as you said you had, none of this would have happened. You lied to me when you said she didn't know. All this is on you.
"Grace is safe, but the Dowager is dead—killed by Inspector Rollo. But Rollo always had a big mouth: I know the mole's name. I will be coming for them.
"The Parson approached me after he answered my first question on Trenchfall; he was seeing the last act of my death play out. The last of Geoff Tellar died with Hope two days ago.
"I'm warning you only once—as an old friend. Stay out of my way.
"Major Tellar is dead. Johnny Dillinger is going to war with the Revenue Service.
"And even God's grace itself won't stop me."
Synchrony
Alexis Ames
Alban woke with a splitting headache, a mouth that tasted like the inside of a ship’s waste converter, and no memory of the previous night.
None of that was surprising, but the ropes were new. He tugged uselessly at the ones that secured his wrists behind his back. He’d been bound at the ankles and knees as well, and left lying in a heap on the deck. He could feel a ship’s engines thrumming through his cheek, another oddity. Last he remembered, he was in his quarters on the Lighthouse, and nowhere near a ship.
Alban levered himself into a sitting position. A single lantern hung on the wall opposite. It didn’t cast much light, but from what Alban could see, he was in a ship’s cargo hold. He racked his brain for what he could have done to get himself thrown in here. He’d paid off most of his debts and had hidden himself pretty well from the people looking to collect on the ones he hadn’t cleared yet. He supposed he could have gotten drunk and wandered onto a ship, but that didn’t explain the restraints.
Before he could follow that thought process much farther down the rabbit hole, the door to the cargo hold slid open, and Madoc stepped through.
Alban slumped in relief. “Fucking hell, Madoc, you could warn a guy first!”
Madoc paused, his brow furrowing in confusion. “What?”
“Though I could do without the ropes, to be honest.” Alban tugged on them for emphasis. “And if you wanted to tie me up, couldn’t you have done it, I don’t know, on a bed? This isn’t exactly the way to get a guy in the mood, darling.”
Madoc choked on air. “What?”
“Oh, wait, is this a roleplay?” Alban brightened. They had discussed spicing up things in the bedroom, and that would explain the uncomfortable ropes and the drab setting. “What’s the scenario supposed to be? Sexy pirate captain captures a virgin deckhand?”
“Have you hit your head?” Madoc hissed.
“No?” Alban blinked. “Oh, wait, is that part of the roleplay?”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Madoc snapped, and Alban recoiled. Madoc never raised his voice to him. “I’ve captured you, Alban! Your life is over!”
Alban licked suddenly dry lips. Was Madoc drunk? Had he been drugged? There was something wrong about him, from the clothes that he wore to the sharp edge in his voice that Alban had never heard before. This man looked like Madoc, but he wasn’t Madoc at all.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said finally, “but I’d like to go now, please.”
Madoc snorted. “You’ve been captured by your mortal enemy after years of pursuit and you think that asking me to let you go is going to work?”
“Mortal enemy?” Whatever game Madoc was playing, Alban definitely wasn’t enjoying it anymore. “Madoc, we’re married. And I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I want to go home. Where did you even get this ship, anyway?”
“Where did I get—it’s my ship!”
Alban snorted. “You don’t have two gold coins to rub together, much less a ship.”
Madoc turned on his heel and left the cargo hold without so much as a response.
It wasn’t difficult for Madoc to figure out that the man in his cargo hold was from a different universe. His astrogator’s scan confirmed it. This Alban’s atoms didn’t resonate properly with the harmonics of this universe, the surest way to tell that he was from elsewhere. Not just elsewhere, but another universe where Madoc was his husband.
The thought sent a shudder rippling down Madoc’s spine, and his lip curled involuntarily. Husband. How revolting.
“How the hell did he end up here?” Madoc demanded. His astrogator shrugged.
“Events like this aren’t too common, but when they do happen, displacers are usually involved.”
Madoc’s pursuit of Alban had led him to the Lighthouse, the closest he had ever come to catching the other pirate captain. He’d tracked Alban to New Aegean, somewhere Alban had no business being in the first place unless he was purchasing illegal tech. Alban had caught sight of Madoc and bolted, disappearing seamlessly into the crowd, and Madoc had only caught up with him because he’d found Alban unconscious in a corridor. He must have used a displacer to try to escape—only it had sent him to an entirely different universe, and replaced him with this less-than-adequate copy.
There was only one thing for it. They had to return to the Lighthouse.
Down in the cargo hold, Alban hadn’t moved.
“You’re not Alban.”
Alban gave Madoc a flat look. “Oh? Well, that’s news to me.”
“You’re from another universe.”
“I’m...sorry, a what?”
Madoc sighed. “Didn’t you watch Booster Jane growing up?”
“Who didn’t?”
“Remember that episode where she wakes up in a world that’s like hers, but isn’t?” Alban looked blank, and Madoc shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, you don’t belong here.”
“So you’re letting me go?” Alban asked hopefully.
“No,” Madoc said, and Alban’s face fell. “You’re not the Alban I was after, and I want him back. I can’t be the sector’s most fearsome pirate captain without a rival. It’s not impressive if I just declare myself to be a fearsome pirate captain, is it? I have to prove it. No, I’m going to send you back to where you came from, and I’m going to get my Alban back.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Alban asked warily.
“We are going to the End of the World.”
Six hours later, Alban wrinkled his nose as he stared out the porthole at the empty patch of space. “This is the End of the World?”
“What is it in your universe?” Madoc asked, mildly affronted by Alban’s obvious distaste.
“It’s a nebula, and it’s beautiful,” Alban said, and then he amended, “Well, alright, it’s kind of crap, and it’s at the edge of explored space and no one wants to live there, but at least it isn’t a black hole.”
“You live there.”
“Yeah, but I’m not no one,” Alban said. “I’m a pirate.”
Madoc huffed and led the way to the airlock. This Alban was nothing like the one that he knew, who was cunning and sly and full of rightfully-earned swaggering confidence. This alternate Alban was sunny and cheeky and didn’t have two brain cells to his name. Madoc wanted to be rid of him as much as he wanted this universe’s Alban back.
The Poisonous Serpent finished its docking procedures, and the airlock door slid open to admit them to the station. Alban took one step out of the airlock and stopped dead.
“This is the Lighthouse?”
Madoc grabbed Alban by the elbow and pulled him into the flow of people. “You are in an alternate universe, and you need to stop being surprised by that.”
Alban yanked his arm out of Madoc’s grasp. “I don’t know why your Alban puts up with you.”
“He doesn’t put up with me, he’s my nemesis. We have a rivalry! By definition, we despise each other.”
“That’s what you call a decades-long obsession with someone else? A rivalry?”
“I should’ve pushed you out an airlock,” Madoc muttered.
“But then you wouldn’t get your nemesis back, and then where would you be?”
“Sleeping soundly on my ship instead of skulking around on the Lighthouse in the middle of the night,” Madoc said. The idea of never seeing this universe’s Alban again made his gut clench, and why the hell was that? He hadn’t eaten in a while, distracted by the pursuit and capture of his quarry. That must be it. “Come on. The sooner we get this over with, the better.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the space station’s seediest bar. Alban hurried after him.
As they made their way through the Lighthouse, Alban tried to comfort himself by mentally cataloging all the similarities between this universe and his own. He passed familiar clothing shops, markets, and stores that sold refurbished spaceship parts. Even in the middle of the night, the Lighthouse was bustling, and he caught sight of a few familiar faces. He had to remind himself not to wave, though, and the thought that no one here recognized him as him was wholly depressing. What if he couldn’t get back to his own universe? What if he was stuck here forever? He could stay on this Lighthouse, he supposed, but it would probably hurt too much. This was where he had made a home with the Madoc of his universe. He couldn’t live here without his husband.
No use dwelling on that right now, he told himself firmly. He was going to get home.
“So what are we doing?” Alban asked, lengthening his stride so he was beside Madoc.
“We are not doing anything,” Madoc said. “You are going to go talk to that man and get him to sell you a displacer. Here’s all the gold you have to work with.”
Madoc tossed him a coin purse, and then pointed at the man seated at the end of the bar.
“But those are illegal!”
Madoc’s eyes flicked to the ceiling, as though asking an unseen deity for help. “Yes.”
“Even uttering the word displacer could get me arrested!”
“Then be creative,” Madoc snapped. “Are you a pirate or aren’t you?”
“Not a very good one!”
“Do you want to get home to your husband or not?”
That gave Alban pause. Yes, he did, more than anything, but what Madoc was asking of him was too much.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“Yes, you can,” Madoc said. “In your universe, you may be an incompetent pirate. But in this one? You’re the second-most feared pirate in the sector. So go over there and act like it.”
The man sitting at the end of the bar looked more like a pirate than Alban did. He turned his scarred face toward Alban as he approached, one blue eye searching him, the other clouded over and sightless.
“No,” he said, before Alban even had a chance to sit down.
“No, what?” Alban asked.
“No to whatever it is you want,” the man—Dillinger, that’s who Madoc said he was—said. “You look like trouble, and I’ve got enough of that as it is.”
“I can make it worth your while.”
Dillinger snorted. “I doubt that.”
You’re a fearsome pirate, act like it! Alban took a breath, steeling himself, and then pulled out the stool next to the man and sat down. The bartender appeared, and Alban ordered a Galaxy Blaster.
“A what?” the bartender said blankly.
Damn. A universe that not only had a Madoc who was his worst enemy, but didn’t even have Galaxy Blasters? What an intolerable place. “Er...sorry. Get me something strong enough to tranquilize a Cexil beast.”
He sincerely hoped they had Cexil beasts here, and relaxed when the bartender grinned and went off to mix his drink. Dillinger silently nursed his own until the bartender returned with a lurid green drink and pushed it across the bar to Alban, and Alban tossed them a gold coin.
“There’s more where that came from,” Alban said to Dillinger, who snorted.
“Look, kid, I’m not in the mood for whatever this is. Go bother someone else.”
“I need a displacer,” Alban blurted, and inwardly cursed. He hadn’t said it loudly, but Dillinger’s eyes widened regardless. In one fluid movement, he rose from his seat and slipped out of the bar. Alban blinked at the empty chair for a moment in shock before getting to his feet and darting after Dillinger. What the hell? How had the other man vanished so quickly?
Alban caught up with Dillinger inside an abandoned storefront in Uptown. He thought it might have once been a tattoo parlor. In his universe, it was a flower shop.
“What the fuck do you want?” Dillinger spat, swinging his pistol around to point it at Alban—but Alban was faster, and had the business end of his coilgun in Dillinger’s face before the man had finished his sentence.
“I’ve already told you what I want,” Alban said. He could feel sweat gathering between his shoulder blades and trickling down his spine. Fear must have been rolling off him in waves; he wondered wildly if the other man could smell it.
“What makes you think I know anything about how to get it?” Dillinger demanded.
Because a big scary man who looks like my husband but who isn’t my husband told me you did. “It’s my business to know things like that. Now talk.”
; Dillinger sneered. “Or you’ll kill me?”
“Or I’ll make things very unpleasant for you,” Alban said, hoping that Dillinger would take the waver in his voice for fury rather than for the fear it was. He hoped he wouldn’t have to shoot or torture this man. He didn’t have the stomach for blood. “I’m sure the authorities would be very interested to know that you’ve been selling displacers out of the Lighthouse.”
“I haven’t—” Dillinger turned an alarming shade of red. “You could ruin everything I’m trying to do here.”
“Then you’d best talk so I can leave you alone.”
“I don’t have what it is you’re looking for. Either of them.”
“Who does?”
Dillinger gnawed on the inside of his cheek, a muscle pulsing in his jaw.
“The cyborg,” he spat. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”
And then Dillinger vanished, leaving Alban with his coilgun pointed at a blank wall.
“Are you gonna tell me who the cyborg is?”
“She’s your first mate.” Madoc strode briskly down the corridor, dimly aware that Alban was almost jogging in order to keep up with him. He didn’t slow his pace. Either of them. So Dillinger had sold—or had facilitated the sale of—not one displacer, but two. The first one was with this universe’s Alban, wherever he had ended up, and if the cyborg had the second one…
That was very bad news indeed.
“Oh.” Alban didn’t sound at all concerned by this information. “So I just have to find her, pretend to be my counterpart, and ask her for the second displacer. Easy.”
“You’ll have a knife between your ribs before you even finish the question,” Madoc said. “She’s been trying to get rid of you for years.”
“Then why is she working for me?”
“Because she hates me more than she hates you,” Madoc said. “Besides, the two of you make an effective team. You’re not the most fearsome pirate in the sector because of your skills alone, you know. Your crew is invaluable to you.”